


all the while my breath is in me

by peacefrog



Category: The Exorcist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amnesia, Angst, Cabin Fic, Cuddling & Snuggling, Drunkenness, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:51:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/pseuds/peacefrog
Summary: Pulling the trigger was easy. The recoil traveled through his body like a pulse.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm tagging this as Marcus/Peter in addition to Marcus/Tomas, but the focus of this fic will be on the latter. The Marcus/Peter stuff is going to be pretty light and reserved to the first 2-3 chapters mostly. :3

Pulling the trigger was easy. The recoil traveled through his body like a pulse.

For years, Marcus had carried a pistol in his bag, wrapped in the shocking purple of his stole, tucked between his bible and his holy water. He’d never used it but to intimidate, rarely kept it loaded, tossed out a box of bullets at least once because they were weighing him down. He’d kept it hidden beneath his mattress at St. Aquinas, thought of using it once when the half-mad priest across the hall wouldn’t stop shouting scripture in the middle of the night. He’d put the bullets in and hold it in his hand just to feel the weight of the thing.

In the end, he’d tossed it into the north branch of the Chicago river after one blissful morning hearing Father Tomas Ortega preach forgiveness at St. Anthony’s, his eyes shining and his voice clear.

He’d learned to shoot decades earlier from a would-be friend met along the way, the brother of some bloke he’d saved in ‘87. Marcus tried and failed to remember his name. Derek, maybe, or Matt. All Marcus could remember now were his hands, filthy and cracked like a farmer’s hands, or an artist’s. Hands that looked like his own. They’d shot at cans out back of the man’s barn with the mid-summer sun fading into the west and sweat trickling down their necks and when Marcus had finally hit his target the man whooped and hollered and pulled Marcus into a crushing embrace.

The stink of gunpowder lingered on his jacket for days after he’d gone.

The last gun he’d held was pulled from Cherry Rego’s lifeless hand. Looking back, life was simpler then, at least clearer in its purpose. A straight path from darkness into light. Marcus never imagined he would again hold a gun, let alone have to use it. He and Tomas aimed to push away the darkness, snatching souls back into the light. Save the innocent, destroy the damned. That was the mission, no matter the cost to them. 

Presently, Andrew Kim lay motionless in a tangle of tree roots and underbrush at Marcus’ feet, the bullet wound livid and sizzling between his eyes. Tomas’ body dropped with a sickening thud beside him and Marcus choked back the bile rising in his throat.

The gun slipped from Marcus’ grasp, and his hands were on Tomas before it even hit the ground. Tomas’ skin was warm beneath the cloth of his vestments, and when he met Marcus’ manic gaze his eyes were clear, and they were his own, and Marcus was so relieved that he couldn’t hold back the sob that crawled up from his throat.

Mouse rushed around the cabin muttering something that Marcus couldn’t quite make out. Something about the police. Something about needing to run, her words punctuated by the whirring of helicopter blades overhead, a searchlight strobing through the rotting window slats giving everything the aura of a dream.

Tomas’ expression twisted, flashing from confused to terrified, and when Marcus reached out to cradle his face Tomas wrenched his body away. His eyes darted between Marcus and Mouse and the dead man on the ground. “Where am I?”

Marcus’ stomach lurched. He was going to be sick. “Tomas? Are you all right?”

Tomas’ stare was distant. “I don’t understand. Why am I in this place? Who are you? What happened to that man?”

“All right. It’s okay. Just breathe. Tell me the last thing that you remember.”

Mouse paced frantically at Marcus’ back. “We don’t have time for this.”

“Just give him a second!” Marcus shouted over his shoulder. “Tomas. Look at me. Tell me what happened.”

Tomas angled his body away from Marcus’ touch. “Why do you keep calling me that? Who is Tomas?”

Marcus stumbled back, nearly tripping over Andy’s lifeless form, the world tipping beneath his feet. He’d seen this once before, years back, a woman pulled back from the brink so close to integration that there was nothing left, not even her name. She didn’t recognize her own children, her husband was a stranger. Marcus tried to check in on them months down the road, but the husband would only spit obscenities into the receiver before cutting off the call, and Marcus was too ashamed to ever call back.

“We have to go. Right now,” Mouse said, folding Andy’s limp fingers around the gun, staging the scene the best that she could.

Tomas pulled himself to his feet. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you tell me—”

Mouse stood near the front of the cabin, peering through the window slats. “Stay here then, but we’re leaving.”

Marcus couldn’t get his head straight, a million jumbled thoughts fighting in the static. “Just wait.”

“Marcus.”

Marcus held his head in his hands. “Shit.” He let his hands fall at his sides, raised his eyes to look at Tomas. “Listen. I know that you’re scared. I know it. But please, please Tomas. Please just come with me, all right? It’s not safe for you to stay here.”

Tomas stood in the corner like an animal trapped and trembling. Like a child lost and hoping at any second to spot his parents in the rush of a crowd. He looked down at Andy, up at Marcus, over to Mouse near the door, back to Marcus again. “You killed that man?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Distantly, the helicopter strobed overhead. Marcus’ heart clenched tight as a fist in his chest. “It’s complicated. And I will explain it to you, but we can’t do it here.”

Tomas looked at Marcus with a detached sort of disgust. “I want to go home,” he said, and Marcus was too terrified to ask him where in the void of his mind he imagined his home might be.

“We’ll get you there,” Marcus said, quite unconvincingly, but Tomas moved from the corner anyway, slinking past Marcus to where Mouse stood near the door.

“We have to get back to the mainland now,” Mouse said, wringing her hands. “We won’t be able to catch a ferry for hours.”

“I have an idea,” said Marcus, pulling his phone from his pocket.

Peter answered on the fifth ring, his voice heavy with sleep. “Hey. Everything all right?”

“No. How far are you from Andy’s house?”

“Not far. Slept on my boat. Tell me what happened, Marcus.”

“No time. I’ll explain later. The road where you picked me up before, can you meet us there?”

“I can. Should I be worried?”

“If it gets you here quicker.”

“All right.” Peter laughed nervously. “Be careful. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

—

By some miracle, they made it to the road without being spotted. They piled into Peter’s truck—Mouse and Tomas in the back, Marcus in the passenger seat—and Peter, blessedly and without prompting, flipped them around and sped back toward the dock.

“Should I be worried that we’re being followed?” Peter asked, glancing in the rearview, then over at Marcus.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” Marcus said.

“Not terribly reassuring.”

“I’m sorry, Peter.”

Peter’s expression was hard to read. He kept his eyes focused on the road. “Is Andy all right?”

Shame bubbled in Marcus’ veins like a fever. He gazed out the window, watching the trees fly past in the dark. He could feel Peter’s eyes on him, but he couldn’t bear to meet them.

—

“I’ll take you all to my house on the mainland,” Peter said, the boat rocking gently beneath their shoes. “And when we get there, I’d really love for you to fill me in on what the hell is going on here.”

Marcus curved a hand around Peter’s shoulder. “Thank you.” 

Marcus sighed, the weight of the night so crushing he thought for a second he might collapse. He glanced over to Tomas, standing near the stern looking terrified and like he might already be seasick. And all Marcus could think was, _I know the feeling._ And he wanted to go to him, but he knew that Tomas would only pull away, so he turned his eyes to the blanket of dark overhead, the dotting of stars between the clouds like cold eyes twinkling their indifference.

He’d never needed to feel God’s presence so terribly as he did there beneath those stars, with Peter pulling away and Tomas so distant. He’d never felt so empty. Not a hollow vessel, but something shattered, unable to be filled even if there were something left to pour inside. Fragments of the man he thought himself to be. Repugnant. Unworthy. An apostate in the truest sense of the word.

Peter’s boat rumbled to life and set its course for the mainland. Marcus turned his eyes from the sky to the foaming black water, the invitation of the hollow sea. 

—

Peter’s truck was back on the island, so they took a taxi from the dock to his house. The drive there was painfully awkward, with Mouse up front in the passenger seat and Marcus crammed in the back between Peter and Tomas. Tomas sat stiff as a rod, pressed as closely to the door as he could manage, his arms folded close to his chest, and the look on his face said he might just make a run for it the first chance he got. Mouse was stoic and silent and impossible to read. Peter was warm and spent the entirety of ride with his hand cupped over the bony jut of Marcus’ knee. Marcus had to remind himself a half dozen times that he needed to breathe.

They arrived at Peter’s house just as the dawn was breaking open the sky, ripe and purple as a bruise. “There’s a spare bedroom,” Peter said as they filed into the foyer, “with a king sized bed, and a pull-out in the living room. If you’re hungry, feel free to raid the kitchen.” He laughed awkwardly, turning to Marcus. “Can we talk?”

Before Marcus could get a word out, Tomas cut in. “I don’t want to stay here. I don’t know any of you and I want to go home.”

Peter looked between the three of them, tilting his head in confusion. Marcus sighed hard and turned to Mouse. “Will you keep any eye on him? Just—” Tomas stood near the doorway, looking ready to fight. Marcus eyed him sadly before turning back to Mouse. “Please, don’t let him go anywhere.”

“If he wants to leave, he’s going to leave,” she said, but immediately turned from him and took Tomas by the arm. “Come on. Let’s get you something to eat.”

Much to Marcus’ surprise, Tomas followed her into the house without so much as a word. Peter showed them the way, and Marcus watched the sad slump of Tomas’ broad shoulders until they disappeared around the corner. Marcus stood paralyzed until Peter returned.

“Come on. You look like you’re about to fall over.”

Peter led Marcus into the living room. On the sofa, Marcus allowed Peter to fold him into his arms, and the relief of the comfort was such that Marcus felt he might weep right then. He held it together, and with a rush of blood in his ears he pulled back and met Peter’s gaze.

“He has amnesia,” Marcus choked out, and then the words just started to flow. He told Peter everything, from the exorcisms to what happened with Andy just hours ago, and when he was finished, Marcus was stunned at the placid expression on Peter’s face.

“Okay.” Peter breathed in deep, exhaled hard. 

“I’m sorry about Andy,” Marcus said. “I know he was your friend.”

“I’m sorry, too. He was a good man, but it sounds like you didn’t have any other choice.”

“We always have a choice.”

Peter stared at him for a moment, his posture tight and his eyes soft. ”Are the kids all right?”

“As far as I know, they made it off the island.”

“That’s good to hear.”

Marcus shifted his gaze, exhausted and ashamed. He looked down at his filthy, trembling hands. “If you want us to go I would understand.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Peter stroked a hand along the curve of Marcus’ jaw. “You and your friends need to rest.”

Marcus sniffed. “Yeah.”

“Maybe all your partner needs is a nice long nap.”

Marcus met Peter’s eyes, praying that it could all be so simple. Praying in some useless way, his thoughts stumbling up and away into indifference. And all he could think to say was, “I’m knackered.”

Peter gave a little smile, his hand finding its way to Marcus’ thigh. “You know, there’s plenty of room in my bed for one more.”

Marcus’ lungs felt paralyzed. Exhausted and ashamed he said, “I can’t. I—”

“It’s okay. You don’t need to explain. We can talk more after you get some sleep.”

Marcus heaved out a sigh. He didn’t deserve Peter’s bed or his understanding. He wanted to be screamed at until his ears gave out, to be shoved out into the bruising morning light. He deserved a kick to the teeth and a gutter to curl up in. What he got instead was Peter’s strong arms helping him to his feet, leading him down the hallway to the kitchen, where Tomas and Mouse were sitting at a little round table in the corner. Tomas had a far away look in his eyes and he held his collar in his hands.

“Come on,” Peter said, “let’s get you all settled in.”

Mouse took the couch, and with some reluctance Tomas followed Peter and Marcus to the guest room. 

“Sleep as long as you need to,” Peter said, his hand lingering on Marcus’ shoulder. “I’ll probably be at work when you wake up, but I’ll see you tonight. Call me if you need anything at all.”

Marcus watched Peter turn away and disappear into his room across the hall. He shut the door and sank down to the floor right there, hugging his knees close to his chest. Tomas sat in an armchair by the window, still holding onto his collar, studying it like a thing just discovered, a relic plucked from around his own neck. “I’m a priest,” he said.

The rush of blood in Marcus’ ears bordered on maddening. When was the last time he’d slept? Days ago, so many days, folded in on himself in his stiff motel bed, Tomas snoring his head off on the other side. He’d thought of elbowing Tomas to cut out the noise before realizing he’d grown used to the sound. All of Tomas Ortega’s little noises and ticks and the mumbling under his breath in Spanish had become—somewhere between Chicago and Seattle—the soundtrack to his life. Beyond the blood, the world felt far too quiet now.

“What’s the last thing you remember?” Marcus asked, rubbing at his weary eyes.

“I—” Tomas shook his head, frowning, looking small. “I don’t know.”

“You said you wanted to go home. Where is that?”

Tomas’ eyes went wide. He closed his fist tightly around the collar in his hand. “I don’t know.” His lips trembled and his eyes welled with tears. “How can I not know?”

Marcus fought the urge to go to him, to pull him into his arms and inhale the familiar scent of his hair. He pulled himself to his feet and walked over to the bed, closer to Tomas now, but not close enough to touch. “Something happened to you,” he said delicately. Tomas was far too fragile to have the whole truth dumped into his lap just yet. “You tried to help someone and when you came back…” He couldn’t stand the look in Tomas’ eyes. He wanted to scream until his voice gave out. “We’ll figure it out, all right? We will. But first you need to get some rest.”

Tomas placed his collar on the window sill. “Your name is Marcus?”

The question sat like a stone in Marcus’ belly. “Yes.”

“Are you a priest, too?”

“Yes. No. It’s complicated.”

Tomas contemplated this for a second. “I can’t even remember if I believe in God.” Distress washed over his face in waves. “How could I just forget something like that?”

Marcus heaved out a sigh. His bones ached to the marrow. “I don’t know, Tomas. I don’t know. We haven’t slept in days.”

“I believe you,” Tomas said flatly. “I am very tired.”

Marcus had carried both of their bags from the cabin to the truck to the boat to the cab to the house and dropped them by the front door upon their arrival. He dragged his aching bones to go fetch them and tossed them with a thud onto the bedroom floor. He pulled a t-shirt and sweatpants and a clean pair of underwear from Tomas’ bag and tossed them to him where he sat frowning in the chair. 

“You could use a shower. Come on, think I spotted it down the hall.”

Marcus had grown used to looking after Tomas after so many months on the road, reminding him to eat when so often in the past Marcus would forget himself. Splints on broken fingers. A soothing hand wrapped around a shivering nape. On the nights their beds were two, crawling with him beneath the covers and pulling him close when the nightmares grew too real. And when their beds were one, reaching for Tomas through the dark, whispering to him in Spanish until he found his rest once again.

But even then, Marcus never could have imagined Tomas looking so lost, with his little bundle of clothes tucked to his chest following Marcus down the hall, the desire for some direction—something, anything that made sense—winning out over his fear. Marcus left him in the bathroom and shut the door behind, and while Tomas showered he went to the kitchen and washed his filthy face and hands in the sink, then went back to the bedroom and found himself something half-clean and soft to wear from his own bag. 

Tomas emerged from the shower smelling of Peter’s shampoo, vetiver and pine. Something so terribly masculine—so _Peter_ —that Marcus almost laughed. He lay on his side following Tomas with his eyes, and Tomas sat down on the far side of the bed with his back turned.

“How do I know that I can trust you?”

Tomas’ words set a dull ache under Marcus’ skin. He wanted terribly to reach out and touch the broad expanse of Tomas’ shoulders. “Have faith. Try and get some rest.”

Tomas turned down his side of the bed and slipped beneath the covers. “Why did you kill that man?” he asked, facing Marcus on his pillow.

“I did it to save you.”

“He did this to me?”

“No. Something inside of him did.”

Tomas stared at Marcus with a blank confusion, and Marcus couldn’t decide if he could still see it. The fire, the one that had—for as long as Marcus had known him—lived behind Tomas’ eyes. The passion and the spark that had driven all of his decisions. The radiant, wreckless love that blossomed in his soul and painted the hours of his existence. 

Tomas shut his eyes. “I’ll sleep now,” he said, his voice devoid of emotion.

Marcus’ eyes were so heavy, but he couldn’t bear to close them. He lay on top of the covers watching Tomas’ eyes move behind their lids. Beyond the room, the morning grew ever-brighter, shooting slats of light through the cracks in the blinds and onto the floor. Splinters of golden sun moved across their bodies on the bed, radiant and warm. Marcus lay still, unmoving, unable to feel anything but the cold and the dark.

And when sleep did come to claim him at last, it was fitful and without rest.

—

Marcus dreamed of a shapeless sound, his body a void, rancid gunpowder on his tongue. And though he could not see, he could feel the eyes upon him. He could feel the sound. And the heat, licking up around his ankles—

—

When Marcus woke it was noon and he was shivering, sweat drying on his brow and sticking to his pillow, the space beside him empty and cold. But before panic could set in his eyes turned to the chair near the window, and in it Tomas, gazing through the blinds out into the brilliant mid-day sun.

Marcus bolted upright. “Tomas?”

Tomas looked to him, but there was little recognition in his eyes. What little rest he had gotten afforded his memory nothing at all, Marcus knew. “It’s like someone reached inside of me and pulled everything out.”

Blood pounded hotly in Marcus’ temples. “How did you sleep?”

“It was like falling into a pit. I didn’t dream. I’ve been sitting here trying to remember the names of my mother and my father. I know that I must have parents but I can’t remember them.” Tears fell thickly down his cheeks. “I can’t remember anything before waking up in that room with you and the dead man on the ground.”

Marcus pulled himself to his feet and crossed to where Tomas sat wiping at his eyes. “Come on,” he said, pressing a hand lightly to Tomas’ shoulder. “Let’s get you something to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You haven’t eaten in days. You’ve got to take care of yourself, Tomas.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Tomas, look at me.”

Tomas swatted Marcus’ hand away, a new swell of tears building in his eyes. “Just leave me alone. Please.”

His heart sinking like a stone down into his belly, Marcus turned away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My original outline had this at 6-7 chapters, but I've basically thrown that out the window at this point so who knows. I don't see it going over 10, but you all know how these two are... 
> 
> Am going to attempt weekly updates so pls pray4me as always. <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marcus sat in the kitchen, his hands wrapped around a mug that had long gone cold.

Marcus sat in the kitchen, his hands wrapped around a mug that had long gone cold. He’d taken Tomas a sandwich and a glass of water into the bedroom, sat them on a tray near the window, but Tomas had only turned himself away, refusing to meet Marcus’ eyes or even glance at the food. Marcus had eaten an apple and drank three cups of strong coffee, aching from his eyes down to his toes.

Mouse was up and pacing around the house, trying to reach the hospital about Bennett, getting the runaround every step of the way. Something had happened to a nurse, they’d had to move all the patients to another floor. No one knew where Bennett had been moved just yet.

“You should stay here, get some more rest,” Marcus said when she plodded back into the kitchen, tossing her phone down onto the counter with a huff.

“He needs someone there with him. You need to stay here with Tomas.”

“Tomas isn’t speaking to me.” Marcus laughed bitterly and sipped his cold coffee. “There may not be anything left of him in there for all I know. That demon was half inside him when it died. Who knows what that can do to a person.”

“Demons die inside of people all the time during exorcisms.”

“Tomas isn’t just anyone. He invited it inside, somewhere deep. Who knows what it did to him in there before—” Marcus choked with a well of emotion. He breathed in deep, shut his eyes, allowed a thousand terrible thoughts to crawl across his mind before opening them again, and when he did, Mouse had joined him at the table.

She placed her hand on his shoulder, her eyes going soft. “You’re not going to abandon him.”

“Of course I’m not,” Marcus spit out, a little harsher than he knew was necessary. She pulled her hand away. He swallowed down the tears threatening in his eyes.

“I know you aren’t. You’re different than you were before. Something’s changed in you since the last time we met, all those years ago.”

“More wrinkles, less hair.” Marcus laughed. A little sweet, a little bitter.

“No. Something else,” she said. “Whatever it is, you need him. I saw the way you looked at each other. There’s no point in pretending. It’s none of my business, I know…” She sighed and gave Marcus a smile that was difficult to read. “You’re going to get him back because you won’t stop fighting until you do. So stop pouting and get back to work. I’m going to see what the hell is happening at that hospital.”

Marcus watched her get up, grab her phone from the counter. “Give me that,” he said, and when she did he entered his number into the contacts before handing it back. “Let me know how he is, as soon as you know.”

She nodded, took the phone, shoved it into her pocket. “Can I borrow your truck?”

“You know where we left it?” She nodded, he smiled. Of course. He pulled the keys from his pocket and tossed them to her. “Needs an oil change, and about a hundred other things, but I don’t figure that will be a problem for you. Be careful.”

She walked out of the kitchen without another word, and a moment later he heard the front door open and click shut. Marcus sat with his own thoughts and the last dregs of his cold coffee, shifting uneasily in his seat. His worry over Tomas had overtaken his guilt for the time, and Marcus accepted it as a blessing. He was an old hand at worry; he hadn’t a clue what to do with the burden of taking an innocent life. He swallowed it down with the last sip from his mug.

Peter smiled as he walked into the kitchen, startling Marcus from his thoughts. “Hey. How’d you sleep?”

“I didn’t. Not much, anyway.”

Peter approached, curled a hand around Marcus’ shoulder. “I’m sorry. Have you eaten?”

“Just a little.”

“I’ll make us something.”

“All right.”

“Where are your friends?”

“Mouse set off on her own already, Tomas is In your guest bedroom. He’s not speaking to me at the moment.”

Peter went to the fridge and looked inside. “Is he doing any better?”

“Still can’t remember a thing. He’s scared, can’t say that I blame him. I just wish there was something more that I could do.”

Peter pulled out a carton of eggs and sat them on the counter. “Have you tried jogging his memory a little?”

“How do you mean?”

“Show him the things he cares about. Does he have a family?”

A sharp pang pierced Marcus’ heart. “A sister, yeah. And a nephew.”

Peter clanked a frying pan down onto the stovetop. “Try showing him a picture.”

Marcus bunched his hands into tight fists in his lap. “Yeah. Good idea.”

“I’m sorry, Marcus. I can see how hard this is for you. You must care about him a lot.”

“It’s not—” _what you think,_ he nearly allowed himself to say, but was there any point in lying? “Thank you.”

Peter gave Marcus’ shoulder a reassuring brush as he passed by on his way to the bedroom. Marcus forced a little smile that never quiet made it to his eyes. He found Tomas still in the chair by the window, his sandwich untouched but the water gone. At least he wouldn’t keel over from dehydration. That was something. Marcus clinged to it, the barest thread of hope that they might come out of this one all right.

“Peter’s making eggs,” Marcus said, lingering in the doorway. Tomas turned to him briefly, offering a blank expression, before turning back to the window. “You need to eat, Tomas.”

Tomas said nothing. Marcus sighed and stepped lightly into the room, crossing to where Tomas’ bag lay in a heap on the floor. He knelt down and rummaged though it until he found Tomas’ wallet. Flipping through it, he found what he was looking for.

“Will you look at something for me?” Marcus approached with caution, flipping over the opened wallet so that Tomas could see. “Do you recognize these people, Tomas?”

Tomas gazed upon the pixelated faces of his sister and his nephew, grinning in their Santa hats and tinselled Christmas sweaters, the pulpit of St. Anthony’s looming beyond their shoulders. He frowned, looking between Marcus and the photograph. “No. I… I don’t know.” The distress in Tomas’ eyes tugged at Marcus’ already aching heart. “Who are they?”

“Your sister, Olivia, and your nephew, Luis.”

“Where are they?”

“Chicago.”

“And where are we now?”

“We’re in Seattle.”

“Why am I so far away from my family?”

Marcus folded the wallet tightly in his fist. “It’s hard to explain.”

“I don’t care, I—” Tomas gripped Marcus’ wrist tightly. “Please,” he begged.

Marcus felt his pulse thrumming beneath Tomas’ hand. He swallowed hard. “You’re not just a priest, Tomas, you’re an exorcist. And you left home to follow—you’re my apprentice. You were. I was training you because you wanted to help people.”

Tomas’ eyes went round with horror, and Marcus considered for a brief moment telling him that every word he’d just said was a lie, but then he let go of Marcus’ wrist and turned his eyes to the floor. “An exorcist.” He rolled the word around on his tongue. He looked back to Marcus. “You’re telling me that you and I are exorcists?”

“Yes.”

“We fight… demons?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“I thought you said you weren’t a priest.”

“Excommunicated.”

Tomas considered all of this for a moment. “I don’t think that I believe you,” he said finally.

“Which bit?”

“All of it.”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you.”

A single sorrow pierced into Marcus’ heart. “You do, Tomas. Very well,” he said, stricken with the flash of a memory. Tomas with his face buried in the hollow of Marcus’ throat, trembling and slick in the wake of some horrid dream. “I’ve got you,” Marcus had whispered into Tomas’ hair. “That’s it, just breathe. I would never let anything like that happen.”

That’s as far as the intimacies had gone. But for Marcus, who had spent the better part of five decades with no one to cling to, it had—some nights, beneath the cover of the heavy dark—felt more like making love. Their bodies trembling and sticky with fear. And the relief of another, Tomas’ hand crawling up the back of Marcus’ shirt—

Tomas rose from the chair and pushed past Marcus on his way to the door. Marcus choked down the memory and followed, ambling behind Tomas on their way out to the kitchen. Peter was already plating the eggs.

They ate without speaking, with a tension gathered in the air the likes of which Marcus had rarely known. When they finished, Marcus washed the dishes, and Tomas stayed sat at the table while Peter made coffee. 

“Everything all right?” Peter asked quietly.

“No.” Marcus glanced over his shoulder at Tomas, whose attention now fixed firmly upon the pepper shaker he held in his hand. He turned it in his palm, watching the grains scatter beyond the glass. “I showed him a picture of his family but he didn’t recognize them. I told him about what we do and he doesn’t believe me.”

“Well,” Peter drawled, stepping nearer, speaking low, “maybe he just needs a while. Give it time. I’m sure he’ll be all right.” Peter brushed a hand down the slope of Marcus’ shoulder. Marcus could smell the sea upon his skin, familiar and wild. Marcus shut his eyes and allowed himself for a single fleeting second to savor it.

Marcus opened his eyes and breathed deep. “God willing,” he muttered, utterly empty.

They drank their black coffee scattered around the kitchen, Peter gazing out of the window over the sink, Tomas fixated on the liquid in his mug at the table, Marcus leaned against the counter watching Tomas from the corner of his eye. The coffee was bitter, and Marcus tumbled headlong into another memory.

The two of them half-mad from exhaustion, passing a paper cup of bitter sludge back-and-forth in some darkened hallway three months into their misadventure. The demon had dropped the temperature in the room so low that Tomas had begun to shiver, so Marcus had dug his soft old sweater out of his bag, the same one he’d been wearing the very first day they met. Tomas had pulled it on over his black shirt and the cuffs had swallowed up his hands. Marcus couldn’t keep his eyes from them as Tomas raised the coffee to his lips. 

“Warm enough now?”

“Getting there. Thank you.”

Marcus jumped when Peter’s voice pulled him back to reality. “I’ve got to get back to work,” he said, setting his empty mug in the sink. “You two are free to stay here as long as you need to, just so we’re clear.”

It occurred to Marcus, distantly, that they were still being pursued by the Church. That every demon in a stolen collar or red hat likely had orders to take their lives, to snuff them out. Marcus looked at Peter and he gave a tight little smile. “Thank you, Peter. But we really should be getting out of your hair soon. You’ve done enough for us already.”

“Don’t be silly.” Peter thumbed at Marcus’ cheek. Marcus could feel Tomas’ eyes on them and his cheeks flushed hotly.

Marcus rubbed anxiously at the back of his neck, scrubbed a hand up along his head. “It might not be safe.”

“How do you mean?”

Marcus glanced over at Tomas—still silent, eyes lost, clutching his mug limply—and wondered how much more he could handle. “I may have neglected to mention that the Church has been infiltrated by demons who would like nothing more than to see every exorcist on earth possessed or rotting in the ground.”

Tomas tilted his head, his expression a mixture of confusion and the fear that was becoming all too familiar. Peter stood contemplating, his hands shoved deep into his pockets, and after a moment he said, “I have a little hunting cabin on one of the islands. Belonged to my father, I hardly ever use it. You’re welcome to it if you think you’d feel safer there while you two…” Peter looked between Marcus and Tomas. “While you rest up.”

Marcus didn’t know that anywhere on Earth would be safe for them in the long run, but it would certainly be safer for Peter if nothing else. Marcus could imagine many things, countless sacrifices, but losing Peter to this mess felt unfathomable. “That’s very generous of you, Peter. Thank you.”

Peter let his hand linger on Marcus’ shoulder. “We’ll go tomorrow.”

Marcus nodded, anxious with Tomas’ eyes on him. Even though he couldn’t remember—

Peter pulled away, and then he was gone, out the door and back into the wild of the Pacific Northwest. Marcus watched Tomas where he still sat at the table, uncertain what to say, what to do with his hands.

“You know that man well,” Tomas said after a moment.

“Not as well as you think.”

“He doesn’t know me.”

“No. But he wants to help you. Peter’s a good man.”

Tomas dropped his haggard eyes, exhausted and beautiful. Always beautiful, even like this. Tomas had a face that belonged in a gallery, chiseled by some great master of old. “I should go back to Chicago. With my sister.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Tomas.”

“Why not? She’s my family, it is my home.”

_I’m your family. I’m your home,_ Marcus wanted to scream. “Just—It’s not safe for you there right now, all right? I know you’re scared, I know you’re confused, and I know that you have no reason to but I need you to trust me, Tomas. Can you do that for me? Just for now.”

Tomas didn’t respond, his sad eyes looking past Marcus to some distant place beyond the lines of his body. Marcus joined him at the table, and together they sat. In silence. Waiting. Outside, the wind kicked up. The walls around them trembled.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You should try and get some sleep. You can have the bed. I’m going to take the couch.”
> 
> Tomas watched Marcus rummage through his bag and he frowned. “The bed is big enough for two.”
> 
> “It is,” said Marcus, pulling things from his bag and setting them on the bed. A sweater, his toothbrush. “But I know you want to be left alone.”
> 
> “I never said that.”
> 
> Marcus looked at Tomas incredulously. “You wouldn’t speak to me for half the day.”
> 
> “Well I’m not exactly having an easy time with any of this, Marcus.”
> 
> Marcus laughed and Tomas frowned.
> 
> “What’s so funny?”
> 
> “Nothing.” Marcus shook his head, looked at Tomas softly. “It’s just even when you can’t remember who you are, you’re still… like this. You never could pass up a chance at being stubborn.”

Hollow, that’s what he had become. A shadow swept up in the endless dark. An empty vessel made flesh and longing for the light. And somewhere in that void, a name. Some identity he had called his own for long enough. His dark hair was peppered gray in his reflection, the weariness of his age showing in the corners of his eyes. _Tomas,_ that’s what they’d told him. He’d rolled it over in his mind a hundred times, utterly detached, his sense of self no more tangible than the air pushing from his lungs.

“Tomas Ortega,” Marcus clarified over another cup of bitter black coffee. “You were born in Chicago, raised in Mexico by your grandmother.”

Tomas blinked. “What is her name?”

“I don’t know. You never told me. She was always just Abuelita.”

“Is she… She is not alive?”

“She died, many years ago.”

“I see.” 

He filled with a sadness for which there was no name, grief-stricken for a person that he couldn’t even remember. He shut his eyes, tried to picture her face, and came back with only darkness.

“Maybe if I could talk to my sister,” he said, grasping for anything really. Anything that might help him breach the surface of his buried life.

The man who called himself Marcus had a longing in his eyes. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Tomas.”

Tomas—who was very much trying to think of himself as Tomas—glared from across the table. “You can’t keep me from—”

“I’m not trying to keep you from anything, Tomas. If you could remember—” Marcus sighed. “You were trying to keep her safe. You wouldn’t call her if you knew.”

“If I knew what?”

“What the people that are after us are capable of.”

Tomas didn’t know what to say. He folded his hands in his lap and studied the lines of Marcus’ face, finding them both foreign and familiar. Marcus’ eyes welled with tenderness and, overcome, Tomas turned his eyes away. “I don’t trust you,” he muttered, though he didn’t believe the words even as they were leaving his lips. 

“You don’t have to trust me,” Marcus said with a sinking in his voice. “You don’t even have to remember. You only need to listen. Listen when I tell you that we are in danger. You know that I would never—” Marcus’ voice hushed with the sudden realization of his words. “It doesn’t matter. Just try and be still for now. Can you do that at least?”

“I guess right now I don’t have much of a choice,” Tomas said, stricken for the briefest of moments with the urge to reach for the man sitting across from him. 

He pushed it down, pushed it away, pushed back from the table and left Marcus there alone in the kitchen.

—

Peter came home at dusk and made dinner for the three of them. He smelled of the forest and the sea and he sat close enough to Marcus for their knees to touch beneath the table. And he touched Marcus as they spoke, touched him in a way that made Tomas’ belly ache with an emotion he could not place. It wasn’t jealousy. It couldn’t be. Tomas didn’t know these men. And if he had, he supposed that now it didn’t matter. 

“Feeling any better?” Peter asked him, offering a beer that Tomas declined with a shake of his head.

“I don’t know what I’m feeling,” Tomas said.

“You know, I’ve seen some horror in my time. Been through things that twisted my head around so bad I thought I would never find my way back to something normal. Some days it felt like I didn’t know who I was anymore, or how I’d gotten where I was.” Peter took a swig of his beer and went quiet for a moment. “I still have bad days,” he continued, “don’t think the nightmares will ever really leave me, but I’d like to think I’m getting there. You know the saying—”

“Time heals all wounds,” Tomas blurted out. He didn’t know where it had come from or where he’d heard it. Maybe it was just one of those things. Maybe—

“See.” Peter smiled. “It’s still in there.”

Marcus eyed them distantly. He seemed to want to say something, but the words didn’t come. 

“Thank you, Peter,” Tomas said. “I think I’d like to get some rest now.”

Peter gave Tomas a soft look. “Rest sounds like a very good idea.”

Tomas slinked away to the guest room to be alone with his black and swirling thoughts, leaving Marcus and Peter behind to speak and to touch in the kitchen. His belly still clenched tight when he thought about it too much, so he shoved it down along with a dozen other unnameable emotions. He supposed that he trusted the both of them, at the very least trusted the sincerity in their eyes. Trusted the ease with which Peter spoke of his own tortured past. Trusted the easy worry in Marcus’ gaze.

Tomas sat in the chair by the window. He could see the black and white circle of his collar there on the window ledge. He ran his finger along the edge of it and wondered about the life that led him to such a purpose. Being a priest seemed something meaningful and grand, so very far from the empty shell of a person he had become. He wanted so terribly to remember that feeling, a single, fleeting moment. Something as simple as a prayer. He tried to remember one. O, my God—

Marcus appeared in the doorway, looming like a shadow in between worlds. “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” said Tomas, not feeling very fine at all. A noise like television static was growing in his head.

Marcus stepped into the room. “Peter’s going to take us to his cabin tomorrow.”

“All right.”

“You should try and get some sleep. You can have the bed. I’m going to take the couch.”

Tomas watched Marcus rummage through his bag and he frowned. “The bed is big enough for two.”

“It is,” said Marcus, pulling things from his bag and setting them on the bed. A sweater, his toothbrush. “But I know you want to be left alone.”

“I never said that.”

Marcus looked at Tomas incredulously. “You wouldn’t speak to me for half the day.”

“Well I’m not exactly having an easy time with any of this, Marcus.”

Marcus laughed and Tomas frowned.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Marcus shook his head, looked at Tomas softly. “It’s just even when you can’t remember who you are, you’re still… like this. You never could pass up a chance at being stubborn.”

Tomas turned his eyes to the window, the darkening world beyond. “I’m not being stubborn.”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

Tomas glanced back at Marcus and his eyes were soft, a glint of hope roiling there beyond the sadness. He snatched his toothbrush from his little pile on the bed and without another word walked out of the room and down the hall. He returned several minutes later and perched on the edge of the mattress. He worried his hands over his knees and gazed down at the carpet.

“If you don’t want to be alone tonight, that’s all you have to say.”

Tomas bit back the urge to say something Marcus might deem _stubborn._ “I don’t,” he drawled.

It seemed to be enough for Marcus. He nodded, he stood, he pulled his shirt up over his head and tossed it onto the floor. Tomas nearly gasped at the patchwork of scars that revealed themselves all along his back and the slope of his shoulders, down his arms and across his chest. Fractured patterns, some that appeared to have been made by teeth. Marcus grabbed his sweater and pulled it on, and just as Tomas was about to ask about the scars Marcus turned to him and said, “Put your collar away. Don’t just leave it there on the ledge. It means something, even if you can’t remember right now.”

Tomas let his eyes fall to the circle of black and white still sat upon the window ledge. “I don’t know where to put it.”

“Here,” Marcus said, crossing the room and pulling something from Tomas’ bag. A black case in the approximate shape of the collar. Tomas handed the collar over and Marcus placed it inside, snapping the case shut and slipping it silently back into Tomas’ bag.

Marcus turned down the bed. He slipped beneath the covers. Tomas wanted to get up, brush his teeth, join Marcus in the bed, but he was so very tired and his legs refused to move him. “Was I a good priest?” he asked.

“You are. A good priest, a good exorcist. You’re a good man, Tomas. Your biggest flaw is that you care too much. You’re reckless because you want to help everyone that you can.” Marcus’ breath shuddered in the semi-dark. “You’ve got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever known.”

Marcus lay staring at the ceiling. Uncertain how to respond, Tomas pulled himself out of the chair, rolling Marcus’ words over in his head as he walked down the hall to brush his teeth. Back in the bedroom, he pulled off his shirt, suddenly over-warm, and slipped into the bed next to Marcus, though he stayed on the far side of the mattress, the gulf between them stretching like miles.

Tomas brimmed with endless questions, but he was out the moment his head hit the pillow. He dreamed of yellow eyes and black ooze and cold hands on the skin of his face. So much darkness, never-ending. Those eyes, piercing into him— 

He woke sweating and panting and bolting upright in bed at one in the morning, jarring Marcus awake beside him.

“Tomas.” A hand reaching for him in the dark, pressing against his damp shoulder.

Tomas shrugged the hand away, struggling for air, tossing the covers off and throwing his legs over the side of the bed. “I’m all right,” he spit out, white-knuckling the edge of the mattress.

The creak of the mattress, a body shifting its weight, a warm hand pressing firmly to his back. Tomas let it happen. Marcus’ palm pressed flat between his shoulder blades. “Just breathe. That’s it.”

Something familiar. Something in the whispered voice cutting through the dark. Tomas’ heart began to still. “I’m all right. It was just a dream. You can go back to sleep.”

A hand pulling away. Tomas fighting the urge to chase it. And then the sounds of an exit, Marcus crawling out of bed, padding out of the room, returning a moment later and pressing a cool glass into Tomas’ hands. “Drink,” Marcus said. He waited patiently for Tomas to drain the glass.

The sound of an empty glass being set on the nightstand. The clicking on of a lamp. Marcus worrying his hand across the short crop of his hair and sitting on the edge of the mattress, too far from Tomas to touch, close enough to see the lamplight playing in his eyes.

“Tell me about your dream.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“Certainly doesn’t look like it.”

Tomas shivered. “I saw these eyes. They were yellow. Everything was cold and dark.”

“Do you…”

“I don’t remember anything, no.” Tomas supposed that wasn’t entirely the truth. He looked to Marcus, those eyes, blue and worrying, and knew in the depths of his soul that every word Marcus had spoken to him was real and true.

“We’ll go to the cabin,” Marcus said quietly. “You’ll rest up. You’ll be safe there. And in time…”

Tomas continued to shiver. He wrapped his arms around himself in an empty embrace. Marcus rose from the bed and pulled off his sweater. “Here.” He didn’t so much offer it as press it to Tomas’ skin, an insistence that such a gesture could not be refused.

Tomas met Marcus’ gaze as he took the soft old sweater and pulled it on, and it felt at once as though it had always belonged to him. “Thank you,” he muttered, pulling the cuffs down over his hands.

Marcus nodded and pulled away. He rounded the bed and crawled back beneath the covers. Tomas settled back down on his pillow and gazed at Marcus across the gulf of mattress that stretched between their bodies. Dark and storming clouds passed with a fury over his memory. He longed for their clearing, for the very first sight of the eyes that were now falling shut before him. 

Tomas sighed, his own eyes growing heavy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I learned one thing writing this chapter, it's that Tomas Ortega is always going to be Soft with Marcus Keane, memories be damned. xD
> 
> Thanks to everyone who has commented so far, both here and on tumblr. Writing is hard but you guys keep me going. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning. A gentle ache. Tomas wrapped in Marcus’ sweater. _He should be wrapped in my arms._ Swallowing down the wanting with black coffee and simple conversation.

Morning. A gentle ache. Tomas wrapped in Marcus’ sweater. _He should be wrapped in my arms._ Swallowing down the wanting with black coffee and simple conversation.

The night had been anything but gentle. Marcus had hardly slept a wink, only pretending with his eyes closed until Tomas began to snore. He’d watched him across the gulf of their borrowed bed and thought of the last time he’d held Tomas in his arms, beneath the dark and the moon and the heavy motel blanket. 

“Hey,” Peter said, pressing his hand to Marcus’ lower back, drawing him from his thoughts and giving his heart a little start. “Everything all right?”

“Fine,” Marcus lied, rummaging through his bag because he didn’t know what else to do. There was nothing in there to be found. He ran his fingers along the hard edges of a crucifix.

“About last night, I—”

“It’s all right. Really. If anything I should be apologizing to you.”

Marcus’ stomach ached. When Peter had pressed him up against the counter last night and kissed his breath away, for a moment Marcus had allowed himself to savor it, the gentle sigh of Peter’s breath spilling into him. Peter had been hard against his hip and Marcus gasped, pulled away, rubbing at the back of his neck and mumbling about getting to bed. 

“I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry, Marcus.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Tomas came into the room then, rubbing at his hair with a towel, and Marcus’ body flushed hotly from head-to-foot.

Peter smiled, no tension showing in his face. “Well, uh, there’s no rush of course, but we can head out whenever you two are ready.” He turned away. He left them there in the quiet of the late morning sun.

Tomas had dressed in his only pair of jeans and a threadbare t-shirt. He stared at Marcus expectantly. “Is everything all right?”

“Don’t worry about me,” Marcus said. “Tell me about you. How do you feel?”

“The same. Nothing has changed, I’m sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

Marcus felt dizzy, the morning spinning round in a way that made him wonder if it would ever end. He was about to make some remark about Purgatory when his phone began to chime, buried somewhere deep inside his bag, but he managed to dig it out and answer before it was kicked to voicemail.

It was Mouse. She’d made it to the hospital. “Bennett is all right,” she said. “Recovering remarkably, actually. Quicker than they thought he would.”

“Are you coming back here, then?”

“Not exactly. Bennett thinks it’s best if we head to Rome as soon as possible.”

“You know that we can’t. I can’t. Not while—”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Is he doing any better?”

Marcus looked over at Tomas sadly. He held his wallet open to the picture of his sister and his nephew. “Not really.”

“I’ll pray for him. And for you,” she said.

They exchanged a few more words and said goodbye and their conversation at once turned to static inside Marcus’ skull. Tomas sat running his thumb along the pixels of his sister’s smiling face, frozen in time and lost in a moment he could only pray to remember.

—

Peter’s cabin sat nestled at the southernmost tip of Orcas island, swallowed up by forest, near enough to the water to feel the salt deep inside your lungs. He’d gone all out, stocked the cabinets with non-perishables, left them changes of clothes in the form of his own flannels in the chest at the foot of the single bed, spare sheets and blankets and a stack of paperbacks in the corner.

“There’s a generator, but I don’t know that it will be good for much aside from maybe charging your phones. There’s probably an outlet around here somewhere.” Peter laughed and shuffled his feet. “Woodburning stove, plenty of wood out back. Indoor plumbing and running water, thank God. Uh, fishing poles if you’d like to try your luck. There’s an old shotgun under the bed, don’t know where the shells are.”

Tomas stood outside, gazing into the ever-darkening line of trees around the cabin. Marcus could see him from the little window. “You didn’t have to do all this,” Marcus said, thumbing at Peter’s cheek.

“It’s nothing. Happy to do it.” He was smiling, but there was something undeniably sad growing in his eyes.

Marcus took Peter’s face into his hands and kissed him then. He carded his fingers into Peter’s hair, he moaned into his mouth. Peter stayed holding onto Marcus as he pulled away, digging his fingertips into the tops of Marcus’ arms.

“You love him,” Peter said softly, glancing over at the window.

“Very much,” said Marcus softly, breathlessly. He pressed his palm firmly to the front of Peter’s shirt.

Peter’s hands moved to the warm flesh of Marcus’ neck. “Then I’m here for the both of you. Whatever you should need.”

“You’re a blessing, you know that.”

Peter pulled away with his eyes shining. Tomas came into the cabin looking tired and lost. Marcus looked between them and wondered at his own heart, its own capacity to ache in such a useless way.

“I’ll get out of your hair,” Peter said, backing toward the door. He turned to Tomas. “Remember what I said.” He extended a hand which Tomas shook firmly. “Try and rest up. You stay as long as you need to.”

“Thank you, Peter,” Tomas said, and once he had gone Tomas sat down on the narrow bed in the corner and said. “I like him.”

Marcus gave a little smile. “I like him, too.”

“No. It’s not just that he’s been kind to me, or that he’s your friend. I didn’t know him before, you see. Everything that I know of him, what little that is, it’s all here. Meeting someone for the first time. I have that at least.”

Marcus felt empty and filled at once at that. He looked around the room. It was small but more than sufficient for two, with its little bed and woodburning stove and the small table with two chairs and the square of the window and the cramped cabinets hung over the little sink and the little alcove of a bathroom with a shower the size of a coffin and the chest full of Peter’s clothes. There would be no privacy inside these four walls, and—selfishly, he knew—Marcus was glad for it. He thought of the nights spent curled up in the truck, Tomas’ head lolling against his shoulder—

He looked back to Tomas to find him pulling the shotgun out from under the bed. On his knees, cradling the stock and the barrel, he looked to Marcus and said, “I was going to be possessed by a demon.”

Eyes wide, Marcus stepped closer, knelt there with Tomas on the floor by the bed. “Is that something that you remember?” He placed his hand over Tomas’ on the stock of the gun.

“No. I just figured it out. You said something inside of that man did this to me. It’s why you killed him. It was a demon. It’s why I can’t remember.”

“Yes,” Marcus breathed out, a barely audible gasp of a sound.

“Do you regret killing him?”

“No. It was going to take you. You were going to let it.”

“Why would I let a demon possess me?”

Marcus swallowed, considered his words, gazed deep into Tomas’ eyes. “Because you were willing to give your life to save that man. His name was Andy. He had children and—” The guilt flooded over him in a violent wave. He turned from the questions in Tomas’ eyes, pulled his hand away.

“Marcus.” Tomas pushed the gun back under the bed. “I’m sorry.”

Marcus sniffed, rubbing at his leaking eyes. “We’re all sorry today, aren’t we?”

“What?”

“Nevermind.” Marcus pulled his aching bones up off the floor and looked between Tomas and the door. “Just, uh, get settled in. I’m gonna go clear my head. Won’t be long.”

Marcus all but ran from the cabin, out into the late-afternoon air, pulling the sea and the forest deep into his lungs. He ambled aimlessly with no direction, his only wish to put as much distance between himself and the cabin as possible. He collapsed near the edge of the water, a rocky shore that cut into the bones of his knees as he began to sob. He struggled for breath, gulping down great lungfuls air, but it wasn’t enough, and his stomach began to churn like waves in a storm.

Marcus retched and nearly spilled the contents of his stomach into the water. What had he done? Who had he become? Andy was willing to give his life, it was true, but so was Tomas, and who was Marcus to play God with the lives of two kind-hearted and generous men. He clasped his hands and screwed his eyes shut and frantically began to pray, his words running together in a jumbled mess of useless begging.

Andy Kim could still be here were it not for his selfish wanting, and he could have brought Tomas back from the brink of integration with the force of his love. And what was left of it now? Andy was gone and Tomas was a stranger, all the memories of the life they had built together nothing more than stories, shallow pictures fading into the indifference of time gone by.

He prayed and he sobbed until he was empty, and then he pulled himself to his feet and wiped at his swollen eyes, brushed the filth from his pants and did his best to even his breathing. He could almost pretend it had never happened at all. He walked back to the cabin slowly, allowing his worry to once again overwhelm the force of his guilt, and by the time he walked through the door he felt certain he could keep it together.

Tomas stood at the stove stirring something in a copper pot. He’d stripped off his jacket and replaced it with one of Peter’s flannel shirts, an olive plaid that brought out the hazel in his eyes. “Everything all right?” he asked, watching Marcus sit down at the little table.

“I’m all right.” He gave a little smile. It felt good to see Tomas doing something other than sitting around and looking lost. “What’s for dinner?”

“Alphabet soup.”

Marcus barked out a little laugh. “Our friend has truly left us spoiled.”

Tomas smiled. He finished heating the soup and served it in wooden bowls there at the little table. They ate in relative silence and for a long stretch of moments everything settled around them in a quiet comfort. Marcus allowed himself to believe that everything was going to be all right.

Marcus cleaned their bowls in the sink. He disposed of the tin cans in the bin round back of the cabin. He ran his hand along the stacks of firewood Peter had left them. He went back into the cabin and watched Tomas move around in Peter’s flannel shirt. His body reacted to the sight and he didn’t fight it, the beauty and the glory of such a vision. 

Tomas sat on the bed. He looked at Marcus looking at him. “Why were you excommunicated?” he asked, and Marcus felt himself sinking at once. 

“Insubordination.”

“You weren’t a good priest?”

“I was useful until I wasn’t anymore. Doesn’t matter now. The Church has been compromised beyond repair. If there’s anything left standing when this is finished—” Marcus laughed bitterly. “Given their history, they’ll probably be stronger than ever.”

Tomas frowned and Marcus frowned with him. He sighed and sat down on the floor, his head filling with the sound of poor Gabriel’s neck snapping in two, the pop of a bullet finding its mark.

—

Night. Tomas curling in on himself on the bed. Marcus grabbing a spare blanket and curling up on the floor, his jacket bunched up and shoved under his neck.

“There’s room in this bed for two.”

“No there isn’t.”

“I don’t want to be alone.”

“You’re not alone, Tomas. I’m right here with you.”

“I want to forget.”

“Forgetting is precisely the problem.”

Tomas reached out a hand in the dark, an invitation clear in what was desired. “I want to forget that I’ve forgotten.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for, Tomas.”

“Tell me what we were to each other.”

“We were friends. We are. You’re my apprentice. My partner.”

“It feels like something more.”

Marcus’ stomach twisted into a vibrant knot, thrilled at the rush of his blood. “You’re a priest. You don’t know what you’re saying. When you remember you’ll—”

“Come here. Please. Marcus.”

“Go to sleep, Tomas. You’ll forget all about this in the morning.”

“I thought forgetting was the problem.”

Marcus stared at the dark and shadowy ceiling, wanting to feel Tomas pressed to his side so terribly it pulsed like a bruise under his skin. “Just try and get some rest,” he muttered.

Tomas grew quiet then, the room filling with the groan of the mattress, the shifting of fabric, Tomas sighing hard and settling in. Marcus shut his eyes and lost himself to the gentle pull of a memory.

Tomas waking at Marcus’ side, a smile, light spilling through the parted blinds of their motel room. Tomas’ skin warm beneath the blankets, a hand coming to rest over the ticking of Marcus’ heart.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Better than before.”

“Nightmares gone?”

“For now, yes.”

“That’s good to hear.”

“We should get going soon.”

“We will.” Marcus shutting his eyes with a smile.

Tomas laughing, pulling away, hands lingering beneath the covers. “I’m going to take a shower.”

“Leave some hot water for the rest of us this time, will you?”

A laugh, a warmth blossoming in his chest, footsteps padding away, away...

Marcus opened his eyes to the dark of the cabin, to Tomas breathing evenly in the narrow bed at his side. He shivered, wrapping his blanket more tightly around the aching mass of his body, wishing for memory to take him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very large part of why I wanted to write this fic was to get Tomas in one of Peter's flannels, I won't lie. I have zero regrets.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning came with a brilliant flash of sun. Marcus opened his eyes and Tomas was gone.

Morning came with a brilliant flash of sun. Marcus opened his eyes and Tomas was gone. He bolted from the cabin in his sock feet, head whipping around in a frantic search, shivering in his t-shirt as he made his way out into the morning. His heart ticked like a bomb counting down the seconds to that one terrible moment, the realization that Tomas had well and truly left him.

And then Tomas was there, just there, sipping coffee round back of the house, relaxed and loose-limbed in a chair that Marcus would be Peter had cobbled together with his own hands. Marcus felt like a fool the moment he saw the look in Tomas’ eyes.

“Are you all right?”

Marcus collapsed down into the chair opposite. “I’m fine.”

Tomas hummed, took a sip from his mug. “This instant coffee isn’t very good.”

Marcus laughed softly, let the relief rush over him in waves, shut his eyes and breathed in the morning air, his blood pounding like a piston in his ears. He opened his eyes and looked to Tomas, the beard on his face growing thicker by the day. He was still wearing Peter’s shirt. “How did you sleep?”

“Well. How did you sleep?”

Marcus shrugged. 

“I think I remembered something,” Tomas said casually.

Marcus’ eyes grew wide. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

“You just woke up. And it’s nothing big. Not really.”

Marcus’ heart pounded under his shirt. “It’s something. Tell me.”

Tomas sighed. “My grandmother’s kitchen. In Mexico. The color of the walls and the scent of the air. I feel like I can almost see her smile but it slips away.”

It was something, and something was better than nothing. Marcus smiled. “This is very good, Tomas.”

Tomas frowned down into his mug. “What if it’s all I ever have?”

“It won’t be.”

“You can’t know that.”

“I know that it’s only been a few days.”

“How long have you been an exorcist?”

“A very long time. Since I was a boy.”

“And how many times have you seen something like what’s happened to me?”

“Once. But it was a different circumstance.”

Tomas wouldn’t look at him. “Did they get better?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then you can’t know what’s going to happen to me.” Tomas got up without another word, went into the cabin, left Marcus there with his sad and sinking thoughts. When he returned a minute or two later it was with two mugs. He pushed one into Marcus’ hands and took his seat once again.

Marcus drank his coffee. Tomas was right, it wasn’t very good. He watched as a squirrel scampered up a branch, lost its footing, nearly tumbled to the ground, got itself back on course and scurried deeper into the tree. Tomas continued to frown. Marcus said, “Tell me about your grandmother’s kitchen.”

Tomas glanced over at Marcus, then out into the forest. “The walls were green, the paint peeling in places where my hands couldn’t reach. And there was… a picture, near the doorway. Flowers. Pink and white.” Tomas’ eyes were wide, searching. “I don’t know how I know, but I feel certain that she painted them.”

Marcus reached over and wrapped his hand loosely around Tomas’ wrist. His pulse was ticking there. “Hold onto it, Tomas. Don’t let that memory go.”

Tomas searched Marcus’ eyes. “I wish I could remember you.” A breath, then, “Tell me how we met.”

“That is a complicated story, Tomas.” 

Marcus pulled his hand away, but Tomas caught it between his fingers there in the space between their chairs. “It can’t be that complicated,” he said.

They gazed at one another for a handful of seconds, and then slowly Tomas let Marcus’ hand slip away. Marcus laughed nervously and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Well, I guess you technically met me first of all in a dream.”

“A dream?”

“Dreams. Well, you said it was the same dream. You saw me at the lowest moment of my life, believed God wanted you to find me.”

“And did He?”

“I don’t know.” Marcus recalled Tomas walking through his door at St. Aquinas, calling out his name. _Father Marcus?_ “Doesn’t matter now. You’re here, and so am I.”

They finished their coffee. They ate a breakfast of instant oatmeal at the little table in the cabin. After, Marcus went to the chest at the foot of the bed and pulled on one of Peter’s flannel shirts, a deep blue the color of the ocean after a storm. “Come on,” he said, turning to Tomas. “We’ll go mad sitting round here all day.”

They walked out into the forest, and Marcus thought of walks with his mother as a child. Gathering flowers that would sit wilting in a jar on the kitchen table, waiting to be smashed to bits by his father in a drunken rage once the sun had gone away and the bottle had gone dry. Marcus winced at the brush of Tomas’ shoulder against his own and Tomas gave him a curious glance. _Here we are,_ he thought, _a man who can’t remember, and a man who wishes he could forget._

“Do you miss being a priest?” Tomas asked, stopping, leaning his body against the thick and dark expanse of a towering oak. 

Marcus shoved his hands deep into his pockets and didn’t have to think very hard for his answer. “I miss my collar, but I don’t miss the Church.”

“What about God?”

Marcus swallowed thickly, cast his eyes down to the forest floor. “What makes you think He’s gone anywhere for me to miss?”

“You’re sad. I can see it in your eyes.”

Marcus sucked air deep into his lungs, turned his back to Tomas. “Worried about you is all,” he mumbled. 

“Marcus.” Tomas seized him by the arm. “It’s all right.”

Marcus shut his eyes and felt Tomas move his body closer, the warmth of his hand moving from Marcus’ arm up to his shoulder. He gave Marcus’ shoulder a little squeeze.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me.”

Marcus shuddered. “I haven’t felt God since we left Chicago. Not really. Maybe not since... It’s hard to explain. I used to—” Marcus sniffed and pulled himself out of Tomas’ reach, began to walk away. “It doesn’t matter. We’re not here so that I can sit around feeling sorry for myself.”

“Is that what we’re doing?” Tomas followed close behind, leaves and twigs snapping beneath his shoes. “We’re just talking, Marcus.”

“Talk about something else then.” Marcus drew in a deep breath and pushed it out. “Tell me more about what you remembered.”

“I told you everything. The color of the walls. The picture. The scent of her cooking heavy in the air.”

“You said you could almost see her smile. Try and picture it.”

“I can’t.”

“You can try.”

The footfalls at Marcus’ back grew quiet, and when he turned around he found Tomas gazing upward, gawking at a crow crying high atop a fir tree.

“Tomas?”

“I’m listening.”

“To me or to the bird?”

Tomas shot Marcus an incredulous look. “I don’t want to think about all of that right now.”

“How else are you going to remember?”

“Is that all you care about?”

“I care about seeing you get better, Tomas. It’s why we’re here on this bloody island to begin with.”

“No. We’re here because you said we had to come.”

Marcus’ eyes nearly rolled into the back of his skull. “So bloody typical, Tomas.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“If you want to leave, just get on with it. I’m not your keeper. Go wherever you want.” Marcus turned away and stomped off deeper into the thick tangle of trees, the cabin growing ever-distant at his back. If he turned back now, he wouldn’t be able to make out the sharp slant of its roof or the flue jutting out from its surface. And Tomas, too, would be gone from his sight. 

He wasn’t even angry, but he had to get away. How often had Tomas’ endearing stubbornness boiled over into outright indignation? Marcus couldn’t recall another time that felt quite like this. His knees felt like water. He looked back and Tomas wasn’t there, so he collapsed down into the underbrush and tried to catch his breath. Overhead, crows called and Marcus’ stomach turned. So many of them, gathering like watchers in the canopy, singing in time with the rhythm of Marcus’ heart.

And then all at once they were quiet, the forest around him growing silent and still, the rush of the blood pumping in his ears Marcus’ only company.

—

Marcus made it back to the cabin at noon. After several hours spent wandering alone with his thoughts, talking to birds and skipping stones down by the water, finally he felt able to deal with a Tomas that was seemingly more stubborn than ever. He pushed the door to the cabin open. The scent of the whisky hit him at once.

Marcus groaned. Tomas sat at the table taking a long swig from a half-empty bottle.

“Peter truly has left us spoiled,” Tomas slurred.

“I’m sure that’s going to be of great help to your memory.”

Tomas scoffed, then laughed. “Did you have a nice walk without me?”

“No. Why are you drinking, Tomas?”

Tomas gave an exaggerated shrug. “It was here, you weren’t. There’s nothing else to do.”

“Read a book.”

Tomas barked out a laugh and took another drink. Marcus stood in the middle of the room, uncertain how to proceed. Tomas had always been a happy drunk, but that was before a demon had gotten inside of his mind and made mincemeat of his memories. Not wanting to stir the pot he said simply, “All right, then.”

“Hey.” Tomas clumsily pushed back from the table in a sudden move, nearly sending his chair toppling in the process. He stumbled over to Marcus giggling. “Hey. Come here.”

Marcus laughed as Tomas pawed at his shoulders. “I think you need to sleep it off, my friend.”

“I’m not tired.” Tomas pressed himself in a tight line against Marcus’ body, groping at his face. “Kiss me.”

“Tomas.” Marcus wrenched himself away but Tomas followed, pushing Marcus back and nearly down onto the bed. “Tomas, knock it off.”

“Why don’t you want me?”

“Tomas. You’re drunk.”

“I can feel it, Marcus. There was something between us, I know there was.”

Marcus shouldered Tomas out of his way and made his way over to the table. “You never wanted… all those nights. You never—”

“What?”

Marcus collapsed down into a chair. “Never mind.”

“No. Tell me what you were going to say.”

“You’re not in your right mind, Tomas. You don’t even know who you are.”

Tomas huffed. “Don’t treat me like a child.”

“Then stop acting like one!” Marcus didn’t mean to shout. His head was spinning round and round. He seriously considered downing the remainder of the bottle on the table.

Tomas huffed again and fell down onto the bed, crossing his arms with an exaggerated pout. “You’re not a very nice person.”

Marcus rolled his eyes and went to the sink for a glass of water. He took it to Tomas in the bed. “Here. Drink.”

Tomas frowned up at him, looking helpless, and Marcus felt himself melting at once.

“Come on, then. Come on.” Marcus perched on the edge of the bed and cradled Tomas by the nape, slowly helping him bring the glass to his lips. Tomas drained the glass, and Marcus gently lowered his head back down onto the pillow, tenderness flooding through his veins.

“I’m sorry,” Tomas mumbled.

“It’s all right. You just had a little bit too much. Shut your eyes, I’ll make us something to eat.”

Tomas grumbled and Marcus swiped a hand across his damp brow, pushing the tangle of his hair away from his haggard face. Tomas let out a tired, happy little sound, and Marcus pressed the gentlest of kisses to his forehead before pulling away.

“I’m going to remember you,” Tomas slurred when Marcus turned his back.

Marcus could feel his heart swelling and sinking at once. “I know you are, Tomas. I know.”

He wanted to believe, he needed to. He couldn’t recall ever needing anything more. Tomas would remember, would be whole again, and Marcus could get on with the business of his own eternal damnation. Silently, he crossed to the little nook of the kitchen, and in his head Marcus began to pray.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drunk and pouty Tomas in desperate need of a smooch is my new favorite Tomas for sure. Thank you to everyone for the continued love and support! <3


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tomas flopped down onto the bed, his head swimming and dazed, his eyes unwilling to leave Marcus even as he pulled away. “Don’t go,” he blurted out.
> 
> “How far do you imagine I could get in this room the size of a shoebox?”
> 
> Tomas shut his eyes. “I don’t know.”
> 
> “Just try and sleep it off.”
> 
> “Come lie with me,” Tomas drawled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a lil update this week. Basically a half-update since this is only about 1k, but I wanted to get something out in spite of being exhausted after this garbage week. Should have a full sized update next weekend. <3

Yellow eyes shone like twin suns in the dark of Tomas’ mind, his feet so heavy they felt cemented to the ground. Shattered smiles and fragmented laughter spilled through his fingers like water, not a single sliver of memory solid enough to hold. The eyes blinked once, slowly, and the dream was ripped from him as quickly as a gasp. 

Tomas woke—still drunk—to Marcus nudging his shoulder. He grumbled and tossed an arm over his eyes. Marcus said something that Tomas couldn’t make out, the words all slurring together in the roiling dark. More words then, Tomas tried to hold onto them, to make some sense of the syntax and the syllables flooding into the fog of his mind. Something about soup, he thought. Marcus nudged him again and Tomas groaned.

Tomas tossed his arm down to his side and blinked himself back to the world. Marcus nudged him again, and this time his words rang clear.

“Come on. Need something more than whisky sloshing round in your belly.”

“Not hungry,” Tomas mumbled. His stomach groaned in protest.

Marcus’ hand fell upon his face and Tomas leaned into the warmth, wondered how naturally this sort of intimacy had come to them when they could both remember. “How long?” Tomas slurred, his tongue heavy, his words only half the sentence he had intended.

“You’ve not been sleeping for long,” Marcus said softly, pulling his hand away.

“No.” Tomas swallowed harshly. His mouth was so dry. “How long have we known each other?”

“Oh.” Marcus looked from Tomas to some distant point across the room. “Not long, I suppose. Not in the grand scheme of it all.” Marcus’ eyes fell back onto him. “Less than a year, maybe eight months, give or take.”

“That’s not very long at all,” said Tomas, feeling more sober by the minute.

“No.” Marcus pulled away from the bed, his expression impossible to read. “Come on. You’ll feel better once you’ve eaten.”

But he didn’t. Not really. Tomas sat slumped and half-drunk at the table, taking in small spoonfuls of his soup with shaking hands, gulping down water as though he’d spent 40 days wandering in the desert, baking under the sun. Marcus looked at him sadly. Tomas just wanted to go back to bed.

And then suddenly, Marcus gave a little laugh.

Tomas frowned. “What’s so funny?”

“You’re a mess, Tomas Ortega.”

“Given the circumstances, I think I’m allowed to be.”

Marcus smirked, and Tomas wondered if he’d meant it to be so flirtatious. “Well, you’ve always been sort of a mess.”

“You could say anything about me and I wouldn’t know if you were lying or telling the truth.”

“I’m not lying.”

“But you could.”

“But I wouldn’t.”

Tomas sipped his soup and continued frowning. “Okay,” was all he could offer.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m certainly more of a mess than you’ll ever be.”

“I can tell,” Tomas said quite seriously, but Marcus could only laugh.

“How’s that, then?”

“Well, you’re covered in scars for one.”

Marcus smiled through the sadness growing in his eyes. “And I’ve earned every one. What else?”

“You want me to list the reasons why I think that you’re a mess?”

“Very much. Go on.”

Tomas sat back in his chair and considered his words. “You hunt demons for a living. I think that qualifies.”

“Yeah, well, so do you.”

“But I can’t remember so right now that doesn’t count.”

Marcus’ body shook with quiet laughter. “Is that so?”

There came a warming in Tomas’ chest, something to chase away the vague undercurrent of nausea that had been roiling in his belly since waking. He could only nod, and smile, and go back to sipping his soup. When he finished, Marcus cleared away the dishes, and Tomas had convinced himself he was sober. Pushing back from the table and trying his best to walk away, he at once stumbled back to his drunken reality. The table legs made a harsh screeching sound as Tomas wobbled into it, and Marcus rushed over to his side.

“How are you drunker now than you were before?”

Tomas allowed Marcus to lead him over to the bed. “I suspect the chef has spiked the soup.”

“The chef resents such a slanderous accusation.” Marcus laughed. “All right, come on, back down you go.”

Tomas flopped down onto the bed, his head swimming and dazed, his eyes unwilling to leave Marcus even as he pulled away. “Don’t go,” he blurted out.

“How far do you imagine I could get in this room the size of a shoebox?”

Tomas shut his eyes. “I don’t know.”

“Just try and sleep it off.”

“Come lie with me,” Tomas drawled. 

“There’s hardly any room for one full grown man, let alone two, Tomas.”

Tomas opened his eyes and shifted his body away from the edge of the bed, revealing a small sliver of mattress. “There’s plenty of room for the both of us now.”

Marcus stared down at him incredulously. “Tomas.”

“What?”

“You don’t…”

“I don’t?”

“You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

“I’m asking you to lie with me.”

Tomas turned on his side and faced the wall, smiling at the sound of Marcus sighing, then the dipping of the mattress under his weight as he moved onto the bed. He pressed his body in a tight line against Tomas’ back, and slowly he let his arm drape loosely around Tomas’ waist. His breathing felt stilted and unnatural every time it fell upon Tomas’ neck.

“We’ve never done this before?” Tomas asked.

“We have. But not like this. It was different.”

“How so?”

“It was different because you could remember.”

“I’m sorry,” Tomas said, because he didn’t have anything else to offer. His eyes were growing heavy again.

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I’m trying to remember.”

“I know.”

“I guess the drinking probably didn’t help.”

“Probably not. But it’s all right. You’ll feel better once you’ve had more rest.”

His head a mess, trapped in the fog, and Marcus’ breathing growing ever-steadier at his back, Tomas gave himself back over to the dark.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tomas woke alone in the dark, and for a moment he could hardly remember the shape of his own name. The unfamiliar room wrapped around him like a shroud. The tongue in his mouth tasted dry as ashes. He gasped out Marcus’ name with a start, and at once a hand fell upon his shoulder.
> 
> “I’m here. It’s all right.” Marcus’ gentle voice was a reminder. The cabin. The forest surrounded by the churning sea. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

Tomas woke alone in the dark, and for a moment he could hardly remember the shape of his own name. The unfamiliar room wrapped around him like a shroud. The tongue in his mouth tasted dry as ashes. He gasped out Marcus’ name with a start, and at once a hand fell upon his shoulder.

“I’m here. It’s all right.” Marcus’ gentle voice was a reminder. The cabin. The forest surrounded by the churning sea. “I didn’t want to wake you.”

Tomas slumped back down onto his pillow with a sigh. “What are you doing sitting in the dark?”

“I was reading before it got dark.”

“There are oil lamps. And I saw some candles in one of the cabinets.”

“I said I didn’t want to wake you.”

Slowly, Marcus came into view through the blue haze of the dark. “I slept all day,” Tomas said flatly.

Marcus laughed softly. “Yeah, well, you always were a bit of a lightweight when it came to drinking.”

Tomas reached for Marcus through the dark, finding him so near he hardly had to reach at all. Marcus’ knees pressed right against the bed frame, and a tiny gasp escaped him when Tomas’ hand curled low on his thigh.

“Come to me,” said Tomas.

“I’m right here,” said Marcus softly.

“I want you closer.”

“Tomas.”

“I’m sober now.”

“The Tomas that could remember never would have wanted this.”

“I just want to be close to you.”

“That’s not what you’re asking for. We were only ever friends, Tomas.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You don’t have to believe it.” 

“What do you want?”

Marcus was silent for a beat. “What I want doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does.”

Silence. The sound of Marcus breathing, then a scraping of chair legs across the floor. “I’ll get you some water.”

Tomas pulled himself up and sat back against the wall. “Do you always take such good care of me?”

The sound of water. Marcus’ footfalls moving closer. He pressed a glass into Tomas’ hands. “Drink.”

Tomas drank the water down in three big gulps. Marcus took the glass and set it down somewhere across the room, then lit one of the oil lamps on the table, illuminating the cabin in a dull orange haze.

“What are you doing?” Tomas asked.

Marcus moved lithe as a flame. “I want to see you,” he drawled, freezing in his tracks at once. “I mean—”

Tomas’ pulse quickened and a flash of something that might have been a memory twisted in his brain. Marcus’ eyes inches from his own, hands upon his face. _”I’m here for you.”_ The words rang clear as a bell in his mind.

“I’m here for you,” Tomas muttered slowly, and Marcus gave him a curious look, inching closer to the bed. “That’s what you said to me.”

“You remembered something else?”

“I think so. You do take care of me.”

“When you need me to.”

Tomas swallowed, perched himself on the edge of the mattress, pressed his feet to the floor, rubbing his hands anxiously over his knees. “Will you take care of me now?”

Marcus rubbed at the back of his neck, close enough now for Tomas to reach out and touch. “Is that not what I’m doing?”

“Come here,” Tomas reached for him, took Marcus by the wrist, pulled him forward, and Marcus let him. Let Tomas draw him in as though it were the most natural thing for their bodies to do, to be near to one another. 

“Tomas.” Marcus’ hands found their way to Tomas’ face even as he began to protest. Tomas could feel him crumbling in the soft glow of the night. He wanted this as terribly as Tomas did, perhaps even more. The longing in his gaze could not be mistaken.

Tomas pressed his hands atop Marcus’ hands and gazed up into his eyes, so dark in the dim light. “I don’t have to remember you to know how I feel for you.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Tomas.”

“There is something,” Tomas took one of Marcus’ hands, pressed it over the ticking of his heart, “deep inside. Do you feel it?”

Marcus sighed. “I’ve always felt it. Since the moment you walked into my life.”

“Then kiss me.”

“We never—”

“That doesn’t matter. Come here. Come to me.”

In a tangle of limbs, Tomas pulled Marcus into his lap, and their lips found each other with an ease gentle as a sigh. Marcus moaned and Tomas swallowed it down, pushing his hands up the back of Marcus’ shirt. Marcus’ skin was warm under his hands, warm and alive with a desire that felt as though it had been sparking between them for years. Decades. Since before either of them had drawn a single breath of life. Marcus tangled his fingers in Tomas’ hair, losing himself in the moment, and Tomas could feel his arousal growing where their bodies pressed together.

And then at once Marcus broke himself away, panting against Tomas’ neck and stumbling over his words. “We can’t.” He steadied his hands on Tomas’ shoulders, wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I can’t. I’m sorry.”

Tomas pulled his hands away as Marcus separated himself and stumbled to his feet. “Why should we deny ourselves?” Tomas asked. “I don’t feel like a priest. This is not something that we should feel guilty over, Marcus.”

Marcus barked out a bitter laugh. “I do believe that’s the least Catholic thought you’ve ever had in your life, my friend.”

Tomas let out a shuddering sigh. “I don’t remember being Catholic. I don’t remember how I feel about God. I don’t remember being a priest or an exorcist. I can’t even recall the faces of my family.” Tomas smiled sadly, his eyes growing damp. “But I know how I feel about you, Marcus, even if I can’t remember what happened before.”

“All those nights,” Marcus muttered, his face twisting in the lamplight. “All those nights you were in my bed, or I went to you, and never once did you try to turn it into this. Not once…”

Tomas’ belly twisted with dread. “But does that mean I didn’t want to?”

Marcus shook his head, and even in the dim light Tomas could see the tears springing in his eyes. “When you come back to yourself, Tomas, you’ll remember. And you’ll know. And you’ll regret every moment. And when you’re gone—”

“What are you talking about?”

“You never wanted… I was fine with it. I thanked God every night for what I had. I never… and now…”

“Marcus, you’re not making any sense.”

Marcus sniffed and rubbed at his eyes. “Never mind. Let’s just… forget it, all right?”

Tomas got to his feet and crossed to where Marcus stood looking lost. “Hey. No, hey. Come on.” Tomas took Marcus by the shoulders and drew in his troubled gaze. “Don’t do this to yourself. I’m sorry that I pushed, all right. I am sorry, Marcus.”

Marcus nodded and wiped at his cheeks and gave a weak little laugh. “Told you I was a mess.”

Tomas took Marcus by the arm and led him over to the table. “It’s all right. Sit down. Just for tonight, let me take care of you.”

Marcus grew silent then, didn’t speak as Tomas put together a scant dinner for the two of them that they ate by the light of the oil lamp still burning away on the table. And he was silent still as Tomas cleared their dishes away, and made terrible instant coffee that they carried out to the back of the cabin and drank sitting beneath a blanket of stars, their chairs pushed closely together.

Tomas turned to Marcus, watched his face upturn to the silver moon as it slipped beneath thin wisps of clouds. “What’s it like being an exorcist?”

Eyes skyward, Marcus said, “Lonely.” He paused, then turned his eyes to Tomas. “Well, it used to be.”

“You didn’t have another partner before?”

Marcus smiled. “Before you? No. Not many people mad enough to volunteer for this sort of life. At least not after living the quiet life of a parish priest.”

Tomas thought on that for a second. He didn’t feel like the sort of person that would want to leave a quiet life and a family and a home for a life that seemed, by all accounts, to be one misstep away from sudden death at any moment. But he also didn’t feel that he could, memories or no, return to such a life if it meant leaving Marcus’ side. The life of an exorcist sounded terrifying; severing that invisible string that he knew was utterly and irreversibly bound to Marcus sounded impossible.

“You could teach me again,” said Tomas. “If I… stay like this. I could learn it all again. How to be an exorcist.”

Marcus smiled sadly in the dark. “It’s not like it was before.” Marcus turned his eyes away. “More dangerous now.”

“Has it not always been dangerous?”

“Not like this. The people who want us dead, they have every resource you could possibly imagine to make that happen.”

“Then I wouldn’t be any safer going home.” Tomas frowned. “To the place that used to be my home.”

“I know that, Tomas. I know.” Marcus finished the last dregs of his coffee and set the mug on the ground. He rubbed at his eyes and slumped his shoulders, burying his head in his hands. 

“Hey. Hey.” Tomas ran his hand along the slope of Marcus’ shoulders, rubbing soothing circles into the middle of his back. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Marcus wiped at his face, sniffled and straightened his back. “I’m sorry. This isn’t what we’re here for.”

“It’s all right.”

“No it’s not. You can’t just pretend that everything is fine now.”

Tomas sighed, and as he began to speak a thick dread was pooling in his heart. “I’m not pretending. I’m scared, Marcus, I am. I don’t know what’s going to happen and I don’t understand what’s already happened to me. But I allowed myself to trust you, and I felt safe with you. I feel safe here at your side. I can’t explain it.” Tomas reached over and took Marcus’ hand, lacing their fingers together, his heart pounding steadily in his chest as he tried to swallow down the sickness rising in his belly. “My soul remembers what my mind cannot.”

Marcus only stared at him then, lips parted and eyes wide beneath the half-light of the moon. Marcus gave his hand a little squeeze and leaned back in his chair, letting out a sigh that spoke to the utter exhaustion of his heart. Tomas felt foolish, uncertain what to say, so he settled for nothing, listened to the rushing of his own frantic pulse. He felt safe. He felt terrified. Tomas was certainly cleaving himself in two.

Overhead, clouds ever-thicker moved across the face of the moon, blacking out the serenity of her remaining light. Marcus’ face, lost in shadow, turned from Tomas toward the surrounding void of the thick and looming forest. Creatures of the night ticked out a gentle song, and slowly Tomas pulled his hand away. The wind kicked up and Tomas shivered.

“We should go back inside.”

Marcus nodded, giving him a look that said he’d sensed Tomas’ quiet sense of dread. Or perhaps the dread was his own. “Good idea,” he drawled, then pulled himself to his feet and turned toward the cabin.

Tomas stood, made to follow, but his legs kicked out from under him at once. He went to his knees, letting out a gasp and something that sounded like Marcus’ name. Marcus rushed to his side, took Tomas by the shoulders, but Tomas could feel the world around him slipping away suddenly into the fog. Marcus’ face grew ever-distant, his words sinking down, down until there was nothing left of them at all. Tomas lost all sense of his own body, as though he were suddenly made of air, every part of him going limp and slack,

And then dark. So much dark. Lemon-yellow eyes rising like twin suns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomas really is just the most hornt up boy alive lmao, possibly even more so without all his memories and all that terrible Catholic guilt holding him back. Sorry for the cliffhanger-ish ending, this probably isn't going to be as painful as it seems. Probably. Who even knows with these two tho am I right...


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tomas, I need you to listen to me.” Marcus cradled Tomas’ cold face in his hands. “Whatever it’s showing you right now, it’s not real. Follow the sound of my voice, Tomas. Come back to me.” Marcus pressed a hand over Tomas’ heart. “I need you to come back.”

By some miracle, Marcus managed to drag Tomas’ deadweight back into the cabin. Once inside, he stared at the bed in defeat. There was no way that was happening. He snatched the pillow and the blankets and made a makeshift nest for Tomas right there on the floor, kneeling at his side when he was finished and gently stroking the hair away from his slack and pale face.

“Tomas. I need you to wake up.” Marcus sighed as his heart began its sinking. “Don’t do this to me again, Tomas, please.”

Marcus moved his fingers to Tomas’ neck and felt for a pulse, found it strong and steady. Tomas’ eyes were open wide and white as bone, and for the first time Marcus began to fear something truly terrible. Perhaps he hadn’t killed the demon at all. Perhaps it had succeeded in its mission, locked away somewhere deep in Tomas’ marrow, slipping in and out of his memories, lying in wait for the perfect time to steal him away once and for all.

“Tomas, I need you to listen to me.” Marcus cradled Tomas’ cold face in his hands. “Whatever it’s showing you right now, it’s not real. Follow the sound of my voice, Tomas. Come back to me.” Marcus pressed a hand over Tomas’ heart. “I need you to come back.”

In the empty vessel of his heart, Marcus hoped for God. He clasped his hands and prayed to Saint Rita and Saint Jude, begged for the intercession. God wasn’t listening, but perhaps they would be, somehow, there at His right hand taking pity on this sad sack of man, crumbling and in love. When his prayers had finished, he pulled his weary bones away and fetched the holy water from his bag, dipped his thumb into the jar, gently traced a cross along Tomas’ brow. He pressed the whisper of a kiss to Tomas’ lips. 

“My sweet Tomas.” Marcus thumbed at Tomas’ bottom lip, his words barely above a whisper. “If you can hear me, know that I love you with my entire heart.”

Tomas’ heart beat on, steady and even and strong, his chest rising and sinking with the strength of his vibrant lungs, his white eyes gazing unblinking into some far away abyss. And there on the cold floor, when Tomas gasped himself awake without warning, Marcus nearly jumped out of his skin with the shock of it all.

His eyes wild, Tomas lurched himself upright, his chest heaving with the force of his breath. His lips parted as though to speak but no words came out, and Marcus took him by the shoulders and tried to catch the manic focus on his gaze.

“Tomas. Tomas, look at me. Tomas, tell me what happened.”

In between gulping down huge lungfuls of air Tomas blurted out, “I saw him.”

“Saw who? Who did you see, Tomas?”

“Andy.”

“What? How do you mean?”

“I don’t know. He was there, and so was… I think it was the demon. At first, I could only see its eyes. And then… it looked like a woman.”

Marcus sighed with such relief he nearly toppled over. “An echo.”

“A what?”

“What you experienced. Sometimes demons they leave behind… parts of themselves.”

“Are you saying I’m possessed?”

“No. It’s not a possession. It’s what comes after. More like a residue. A flashback of sorts. But I’ve never seen it manifest like this before.” Marcus gave him a sad little smirk. “Although, that tends to be the case when it comes to these things for you.”

Tomas was breathing more evenly now. He gave Marcus a curious look. “Why do you say that?”

Marcus pulled back. He searched Tomas’ face. Where would he even begin? “You can do things that others can’t. Things that other exorcists could only dream of doing. But it’s dangerous.You have these dreams and these visions, but you let the darkness in. We hadn’t even begun to understand it when, well…”

Tomas’ face fell and he looked tired and ashamed. “I see.”

“None of this is your fault, Tomas.”

Tomas stared down into his own upturned hands. “The more I learn about what happened the more it sounds like that’s exactly what it is. Andy is dead because of me.”

Marcus’ stomach lurched. “No. Absolutely not. That is on me, Tomas, no one else. You were trying to save him.”

Tomas frowned, looking lost. Looking as though his soul had just been dragged to hell and spit back out again.

Marcus pressed his hand over Tomas’ beating heart. “Everything that you’ve done, you’ve done because you care. You’ve got a heart that’s big as a mountain, Tomas, and I wouldn’t change that for anything in the world.”

Tears spilled from Tomas’ eyes and Marcus swiped them away, then settled for pulling Tomas tightly into his arms. “This is going to happen again?” Tomas mumbled into Marcus’ neck.

“Probably.” Marcus soothed a hand across the nape of Tomas’ neck. “But when it does, I’ll be here.”

Tomas pressed himself closer to Marcus, gripped him tightly with his strong hands. “I could feel it, the demon trying to take me. I could feel it twisting deep inside.” 

Tomas’ anguish was like a knife slipping into Marcus’ heart. He pulled Tomas even closer still. “That’s all over now. Now I’ve got you. You’re safe here with me, Tomas.”

Tomas pulled back, wiped at his face, gave Marcus a little nod before breaking free from his arms. He curled up into the little makeshift nest Marcus had made for him on the floor, groped for Marcus’ arm to pull him down to lay beside him. Marcus didn’t protest, didn’t speak a word, only pressed himself tightly and entirely along the line of Tomas’ body, drawing him in from behind and locking him into the safety of his embrace.

Marcus held Tomas closely and in silence until the first hints of sun began to slip in through the window. They stirred and rose to the world of the semi-living, brushed their teeth and took turns in the little coffin sized shower in the bathroom. They ate breakfast and drank their pond water instant coffee. After, they walked from the cabin down to the water, the trees trembling and their leaves changing with the season and falling like raindrops all around them, crunching beneath their shoes. They traipsed along the shore at the edge of the line of trees, pulled the air heavy with saltwater deep into their lungs. 

They walked for a while in companionable silence until they came upon a little dock, jutting out into the sea like a twisted root, half-rotted and bobbing in time with the rippling of the water. Tomas, without hesitation, approached the mangled thing and pressed one foot to its edge, the sound of it creaking and threatening to buckle beneath his weight a warning and a song.

Marcus reached for him, took him by the elbow. “Tomas. Don’t.”

“It’s all right. It’s okay.”

Marcus let his hand slip away and watched as Tomas planted both feet firmly on the dock, took one creaking step after another, and with each passing second Marcus anticipated Tomas’ body breaking through the planks and down into the murky water. It was a short walk to the end but it seemed like miles, watching Tomas there, seeing his face turn back to Marcus in the glory of the morning sun, beckoning with his smile.

“Come to me,” Tomas shouted over his shoulder.

“You’re mad, Tomas Ortega.”

Tomas smirked. “You fight demons for a living and you’re afraid of a little water?”

Marcus rolled his eyes and hesitated as he lifted a foot to the dock. He pressed one boot to a single groaning board, the softness of the wood apparent as he took that first cautious step, and the next, and another still as Tomas’ eyes shined for him there among the rot. When he reached Tomas’ side, Marcus laughed softly. “Is this some sort of metaphor?”

“I believe it’s called a dock.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

Tomas’ eyes scanned the water. “It’s hard to feel afraid of something as simple as this after seeing what I saw in that vision. What you called the echo.” Tomas turned his attention back to Marcus. “You know, I think part of me almost didn’t believe you about the demons. Not until I saw it with my own eyes, inside of my own head.”

Marcus shifted his weight and the dock groaned terribly beneath them. “Yeah, well, if it makes you feel any better you were no less afraid the other first time you saw a demon.”

“It doesn’t, but thank you for telling me.”

Marcus gave Tomas a little smile and then turned away. “Come one, I’m not ruining my only pair of boots for… whatever this is you’re trying to prove.”

Miraculously, they made it back to solid ground without busting through even a single rotted board. “You’re in love with me,” Tomas said, the dock now at their backs, catching Marcus so off-guard that he immediately began to flush.

“Why would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true. I heard what you said. I think it might have been what brought me back.”

Marcus shuffled ahead, kept his back to Tomas and his eyes on the stirring water. “Just because I said—It doesn’t mean—I never—” Marcus sighed hard and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Loving someone doesn’t mean that you’re in love with them.”

“Then why did you kiss me?”

“I didn’t, I…” Marcus ducked his head, suddenly ashamed. “I was only… I wanted to make sure you were still breathing.”

Gently, Tomas pressed a hand to Marcus’ shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable.”

Marcus scrubbed his hands over his burning face and tried to regain some semblance of composure. “Nevermind. It’s fine. Just forget about it, all right?”

“All right.” Tomas pulled his hand away and walked on ahead of Marcus. “For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that I’m in love with you.”

“You don’t even know me, not like this.”

Tomas casually kicked a pebble into the water. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters.”

“And if all my memories came flooding back right this second and I said I felt the same way?”

Marcus stood frozen, uncertain how to respond. His game plan on Tomas recovering his memories had fluttered like a dull haze somewhere in the back of his mind for days, never fully taking form. He knew that once the relief had settled, the goodbye would ultimately come. What he had done to bring Tomas back could only mean one thing in the end: He was damned, and he was unworthy.

All Marcus could think to do then was spit the question right back. “And what if you only feel the opposite? What if you realize that without your memories you were lost and desperate for anything to hold onto?”

Tomas gave a little shrug. “I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Yeah, well, neither do I.”

The sound of water flooded into the space of their silence, and slowly they both settled down to sit together there along the shore, Tomas gathering up pebbles and tossing them one-by-one into the water, Marcus digging the toes of his boots into the damp and rocky earth. And it all felt so impossible, what they had become and what they were. Who they would become tomorrow, the future looming like the cold and indifferent shadow of a God that would not gaze upon them.

“I’m not scared of demons, Tomas,” Marcus said, drawing Tomas’ attention from his handful of rocks. 

“Then what are you scared of?”

“You. This. Friendship…” Marcus had to turn his eyes away. “Something more. Everything was simpler when it was just… my body as a vessel. God, the Devil. I knew what to do with that.”

Tomas dropped his pebbles and reached for Marcus’ hand, covered it with his palm there on the cold ground. “It’s all right,” he drawled. “We’ll figure it out together. I have a feeling that’s what we’ve been doing for quite some time.”

Warmth blossoming in the center of his chest, Marcus turned to Tomas and managed a little smile. “Something like that,” he said. “Though usually the thing we’re figuring out is how to save some unfortunate soul from the Devil.”

Tomas smiled wide. “All of this should be simple then.”

Marcus sighed, eyes scanning over the horizon, the brilliant morning sun growing ever-brighter overhead. “If only it could be, Tomas,” he said, Tomas’ hand slipping gently into his own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tentatively thinking I'll be wrapping this up in two more chapters so pls pray4me and these ridiculous boys.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What are you thinking about?” Marcus asked.
> 
> “I’m praying,” Tomas drawled, and at that Marcus was surprised.
> 
> “Thought you couldn’t remember if you believed in God.”
> 
> “I can’t. But I’m praying anyway.”

When Tomas’ eyes went white, Marcus didn’t panic. He pulled Tomas gently into his arms and held him there by the shore, speaking words into his hair gentle as a whisper, running fingers along his skin like lapping waves.

“If you can hear me, you don’t have to be afraid, Tomas. It can’t hurt you. I sent that rotten thing straight back to where it belongs and it’s never coming back again. I’m here. I’m here with you, Tomas. Just me, no one else.”

Tomas was gone for a very long time, and as the sun pinned herself ever-higher in the sky Marcus drifted away, riding the crests of a memory, the current of his mind pulling him all the way back to Chicago, to that last night before they set out on that road that would lead them to this very moment. To this gentle shore, quietly aching together.

—

Marcus had crashed on Tomas’ sofa, the wound on his arm screaming in a steady ache from where he’d been cut open. And in the dark, Tomas appeared in the doorway of his bedroom, pensive, though Marcus could hardly see him.

“Can’t sleep?”

“I see I’m not the only one.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve slept on concrete floors more comfortable than this sofa.”

And then Tomas clicked on a lamp, and he was laughing, and he was so beautiful that Marcus lost track of all the carefully considered words that had been perched upon his tongue.

Tomas crossed the room, sat down on the sofa, in the little space left where Marcus’ legs were falling off onto the floor. “Can I tell you something?” he asked, his face slack and tired.

Marcus remembered his tongue, smiled and said, “Is this a matter of confession?”

Tomas smirked, laughed a little. “If you’d like to think of it that way.”

Marcus pulled himself up into a sitting position, the blanket Tomas had given him bunching up around his legs. “I’m all ears. You can skip the bless me, Fathers.”

Tomas’ face continued shining for a moment, and then fell flat in the dim light. “I am scared, Marcus.”

Tomas’ words tugged at Marcus’ heart. “Yeah, well, demons are scary. Or so I’ve been told.”

“It’s not the demons that I’m afraid of.” Tomas’ eyes scanned along the room before landing back on Marcus. “Leaving my family, my parish, the place I have called home for so many years. That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“They’ll be all right without you.”

“And what if I’m not all right without them?”

Marcus smiled and clapped Tomas on the shoulder. “Guess you’ll just have to settle for the old sod sitting next to you, then.”

Tomas’ expression eased then, his eyes shifting with his smile. “Thank you, Marcus.”

“Don’t thank me yet, Father Tomas. Long road ahead of us now.”

“I know.” Tomas nodded solemnly. “But you’re a good teacher. And an even better friend.”

Marcus rubbed at the back of his head and flushed a little, turned his face away so Tomas wouldn’t see. “We should really try to get some rest while we can,” he drawled, drawing the blanket more closely around his weary bones.

“Of course,” Tomas said, pulling away, the sofa creaking as he rose to his feet. And turning back he said, “I’ll make eggs in the morning.”

Marcus smiled warmly. “Sounds wonderful,” he said, then watched as Tomas made his way back to his room, back to his own safe bed for perhaps the very last time. 

_But he’ll never be alone,_ Marcus thought as he rested his head back on his borrowed pillow that smelled faintly of Tomas. _He’ll never be alone, and neither will I. I wonder what it will be like_ —

—

Tomas came to gently, resting like a whisper in Marcus’ arms, a tear spilling warmly on his cheek. “You’re all right,” Marcus said softly. “I’m here. You’re all right. Tell me what you saw.”

Tomas straightened his back, looked around with his wide and bleary eyes. “More of the same. In that room with that thing. Felt like I was there for a hundred years.”

“I’m sorry, Tomas, I—”

“Can we go home?” Tomas reached for Marcus, gripping his arm loosely. “Back to the cabin, I mean.”

“Of course. Hey…” Marcus took Tomas’ face in his hands, thumbing away the tears drying on his cheeks. “Tell me what you need from me. I’m here, Tomas. Anything you need.”

Tomas sighed and let his eyes slide shut. “This is good. This is exactly what I need. Just you.”

Marcus nodded and pulled his hands away, pulled himself up to his feet with his bones aching, helped Tomas and his shaking legs do the same. And as they made their way from the shore back to the cabin, the trees closing in around them like towering shadows, the air on their skin turned all but freezing, in spite of the shining sun overhead. Tomas was shivering when they walked through the door, and Marcus drew him immediately into his arms.

“I’ll get you a blanket.”

Tomas gripped the back of Marcus’ shirt and buried his face in Marcus’ neck. “Don’t go.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Tomas. Just here. Just to get you—”

“I have to tell you something.”

“Then tell me.”

“I remembered something.”

“When you came back?”

“No. Just now. On the walk back here.”

Marcus took Tomas by the shoulders and gently they parted. “Tell me,” he said, with far less urgency than he felt in his ever-quickening heart.

“You were holding me in the dark. Whispering words into my skin. We were in a motel room, in the same bed together. There was artificial light spilling in through the cracks in the curtains and I remember thinking that I never wanted to leave that room.”

“Tomas.”

“I never wanted to leave that bed.” Tomas sniffed and began to laugh. “We shouldn’t have ever left that bed.”

Marcus ached softly. “We had work to do, souls that needed saving.”

“I know. Still…”

Marcus pulled back, turned away from Tomas’ gaze. “Let me get you a blanket.”

Their little nest still lay in a tangle on the floor, and Marcus fumbled to free one of the quilts to wrap around Tomas’ shoulders. “I’m not really cold anymore,” Tomas said, and Marcus turned to him with a frown with the blanket he had just freed and wrapped it around him anyway.

“You’re always cold,” Marcus said flatly, but couldn’t help give a little smile.

Tomas pulled the blanket more tightly around his shoulders and sat down on the bed. “Where will we go? When we leave this place.”

“I don’t know.” It was only a half truth. Marcus would be alone and Tomas would just be… gone. Perhaps he could go home then, to his real home in Chicago. They could find some way… “Let’s focus on getting you better.”

“I wanted you.”

Marcus froze right there in the middle of the cabin. “What are you talking about?”

“In the memory. I wanted you then as I want you now.”

“You never said anything. Not once.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t remember. I—”

“Let’s not do this now.” Marcus turned away with his heart hammering in his chest. “Not again. Let’s just—”

“Tell me a story.”

Marcus sighed. “What about?”

“Something I didn’t know even before. Something about your life.”

“My life has been terribly uninteresting.”

“You know that’s not the truth.”

Marcus stared at Tomas for a moment before sitting himself down there on the floor. He looked down into his hands and searched the bleak and terribly sad well of his life’s memories. He’d never told Tomas about killing his father, not directly, though Andy’s demon had mostly spilled the beans on that one, so he supposed that wouldn’t count. Everything else was just as stinking and terrible and dark, all the rooms and demons and families running together in a string of God’s wrath and Marcus’ utter exhaustion.

“I kissed Peter,” he blurted finally. “One day when you and I were apart. He took me out on his boat and kissed me under the stars.”

“That isn’t a very interesting story.”

“You didn’t say it had to be interesting.”

“I had already figured out there was something between you and Peter. Even now. It’s easy to see when you’re together.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Marcus smirked. “Are you jealous?”

“A little.”

“All right. There’s nothing to be jealous of, though. He and I are only friends.”

“Friends who have kissed.”

“We’ve kissed also, if you’ll recall.”

“Do you still think you can call us only friends?”

“I don’t know what I would call us, Tomas. Right now we’re two very tired men in a room with very little to do.”

“I can think of something we might do.”

“That would be a very bad idea.”

“All right. We’ll just sit here quietly then. Enjoying each other’s company.”

“That is generally all priests are permitted.”

“You’re not a priest,” Tomas reminded him, letting the blanket fall down from his shoulders. His unshaven face and unkempt hair made him somehow even more beautiful. “Will you tell me something else?”

“Like what?”

“Anything. When it’s quiet all I can think about is the demon.”

Marcus pulled himself up from the floor and paced the room, back-and-forth, keeping Tomas in the corner of his eye all the while. “You have terrible taste in music and sometimes you snore very loudly.”

“I don’t believe either of those things.”

“You don’t have to believe them.”

“All right. Just keep talking. Please.”

Marcus ceased his pacing and took a seat next to Tomas on the bed. He draped and arm over his shoulders and rested their heads together. “Where to even begin on what it’s been like living with you…”

Marcus didn’t have to look. He knew Tomas was smiling. They talked about nothing at all until dinner, and then talked even more still until the sun began to dip down below the horizon. “I’m feeling a little better now,” Tomas said, lounging on the bed with one arm tucked behind his head.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Marcus said from where he stood in the kitchen, drying out their coffee mugs. “Do you want to go watch the sunset?”

“Won’t really be able to see it through the trees.”

“All right. We’ll stay in here then.”

“All right. Come lie on the bed with me.”

Marcus set the mugs down on the counter and got onto the bed without protest this time. Would there be any point in protesting? There was nowhere else that he wanted to be, no one else in the whole of the world he would rather hold tightly in his arms.

Tomas draped half himself over Marcus’ body, nestled his head warmly against Marcus’ chest. Marcus sighed, contented to be still if only for a moment, the beating of his heart droning softly into Tomas’ ear. He dragged his fingers through Tomas’ thick hair and shut his eyes. 

“What are you thinking about?” Marcus asked.

“I’m praying,” Tomas drawled, and at that Marcus was surprised.

“Thought you couldn’t remember if you believed in God.”

“I can’t. But I’m praying anyway.”

“What for?”

“That tonight He gives me just one more memory of you.”

“Oh, Tomas…” Marcus wrapped Tomas up tightly in his arms, and in his own mind, though he was certain God had stopped listening long ago, he joined Tomas’ silent prayer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is almost a week late, but hey... better late than never, right? xD I just could not find the time to write last week but I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and I'm hoping to have this all wrapped up by this time next week. <3


	10. Chapter 10

Memories are like water, or so Tomas had always thought. Ever-flowing, ever-filling, flooding in and swallowing you whole. A crash of waves at the scent of something familiar. A downpour soaking you to the bone and ending suddenly as it had begun.

But memories aren’t like that at all. No, not truly. Memories are like sparks. Incandescent and ablaze until suddenly they are not. A string of lights twinkling in the dark, their fragile filaments burning on and on. A switch flipped on. A switch flipped off. A hand feeling for it uselessly in the dark, groping against the wall where it had always been until it wasn’t. Until it wasn’t. Was it ever really there at all?

Tomas sat in the dark of his own mind thinking of the switch, grasping at the memories swirling just outside his field of vision. He took one into his hands blindly and then another, clutching them close, pressing them deep into the chambers of his heart and melting them under his tongue. And from the center of his body, a light began to grow at once, radiant and warming as the sun. And the darkness turned to light so quickly he couldn’t be certain it was ever dark at all. And the switch he had been searching for so hopelessly grew inside his hands—

—

Tomas opened his eyes, and he remembered. Just like that. There you are. Marcus’ body was warm beneath his body and for a moment Tomas couldn’t bear to move or wake him. Marcus’ heart was beating steady as a drum where their bodies joined together. Tomas shifted, the bed creaked, and Marcus snapped his eyes awake.

“Are you all right?”

Tomas smiled gently. “I’m all right.”

“You were having a dream.”

“I was.”

“Do you want to tell me about it?”

“I remembered you.”

“How do you mean?”

“I remembered everything.”

Marcus’ eyes went wide and he wrenched himself away, sitting up with his limbs hanging half-off the bed. “Everything?”

“Everything.” Tomas smiled and began to laugh. “Marcus, God has answered our prayers.”

Marcus pulled himself to his feet and scrubbed his hand over his head. He parted his lips to speak but all that came out was a sigh. 

Tomas swung his legs over the edge of the bed and reached for Marcus’ hand. “You don’t look happy.”

“I’m just confused is all. How could you just—”

“It doesn’t matter. Marcus—”

“Of course it matters.” Marcus stood thinking for a moment before dropping to his knees. He gazed up at Tomas and clasped his hands as though he were preparing to pray. “Tell me,” he said, “if you remember, tell me about our life together.”

“You don’t believe me.”

Marcus parted his lips, hesitated, curled his hands over Tomas’ knees. “I need to hear you say the words. Please, Tomas. Just tell me.”

Tomas slipped his fingers over the bones of Marcus’ hands and wondered at their warmth. And, drinking in Marcus’ open expression for one more blissful second, Tomas shut his eyes. “Where to begin? I’d lived my whole life without you.” He paused, took Marcus’ hands in his hands and sighed. “God put you in my head, I still believe that. More now than I even did back then.”

Tomas opened his eyes and found Marcus’ gaze. He continued, “I still remember the scent of your room at St. Aquinas. Your cigarettes. I could smell them on your lips when you came close. I tasted you—”

“Tomas.”

“I was so terrified when I left that room. I didn’t know what to do without you even then. Before I even knew you.”

“You needed my help with Casey.”

“I did. But it was more than that. You changed my life forever.”

Marcus pulled his hands away and rubbed at his eyes. “I took you away from your family.”

“You’re my family, too.” Tomas gave Marcus’ arm a little tug when he stayed silent. “Come up here and sit with me.”

When Marcus got up from the floor and allowed Tomas to pull him close against his side, he seemed nothing more than a mass of trembling bones. He buried his face in Tomas’ shoulder, and Tomas wished for a way to draw him nearer still, to claw his way beneath the warmth of Marcus’ skin. To meld their bones and their hearts and the very fabric of their souls.

“Keep going,” Marcus mumbled.

Tomas let out a heavy sigh. “You taught me everything that I know. If it wasn’t for you we never would have saved Casey Rance, or Angela. That family would have been lost. And then when we left Chicago, I was so terrified, but you made it bearable. More than that. You held me in my darkest hours and made everything all right.”

Marcus seemed to melt into Tomas’ side. “Tomas.” He held Tomas’ name in his mouth with such devotion.

“And everything, Marcus, everything that has happened here in this cabin… I meant every second. Every bit of it was real. And maybe I just had to forget to—”

“Your vows.” Marcus pulled back, his brows knitted tightly together. “You remember now, and you know that you can’t—”

Tomas raised his hand, pressed it to Marcus’ heart, felt it ticking there quicker than a drum. “God put you in my head for a reason. How many times do I need to remind you of that?”

Marcus shook his head. “In your head, not—”

“The Church is broken, Marcus. And those vows that I took…” Tomas sighed and smiled softly, cradled Marcus’ face in his hands. “You were the one who taught me that we put our trust in God, no one else. The Church created those vows, not God.”

Suddenly, like a jolt to his system, Marcus pulled away, practically leapt to his feet to separate himself from Tomas’ side. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he mumbled, turning his back to Tomas, leaving Tomas cold and reaching for him uselessly.

“What are you talking about?” Tomas could feel his heart sinking down to his toes.

“I took a man’s life, Tomas.”

Tomas sighed. “I know, hermano. You did what you had to do. You did what Andy wanted you to do.”

“I didn’t do it for Andy, Tomas.” Marcus sighed deeply, sadness filling his eyes when he turned back to Tomas. “I did it for you. Because the thought of losing you—”

“Marcus…”

“The thought of losing you was unbearable.”

Tomas rose, reached out for Marcus, grazing his arm with the tips of his fingers. “Marcus.”

Marcus pulled away. “And I would do it again.”

“Marcus, please.”

“I would kill for you, Tomas. Over and over again.”

“I don’t understand. Why are you saying this now?”

Marcus looked down at his feet and frowned. “Because you don’t need me now. And because I…”

Tomas swallowed down the lump rising in his throat and took Marcus by the shoulders. “Hey. Come on. I just came back. I just… got back. I am here now, all of me. Can’t we take a moment to enjoy that?”

Marcus’ jaw clenched visibly and he wouldn’t meet Tomas’ eyes. “I can’t trust myself when I’m with you. We both know what I’m capable of.”

Tomas let his hands fall down to his sides. “You’re worried that you won’t be forgiven.”

“I know that I won’t be.”

“All sins can be forgiven, Marcus.” Tomas watched as Marcus began to pace the room. “I’ll take your confession.”

Marcus laughed bitterly. “I don’t regret pulling the trigger. Wouldn’t make any difference.”

Tomas’ chest burned. He felt like he was going to be sick. He sat back down on the bed and held tight to his own knees. “What are you trying to say?” he managed to ask as the room began to tip around him.

Marcus continued pacing, like a frantic animal anxious inside his cage. “We’ll get you somewhere safe. Or you can meet up with Mouse and Bennett if you still want to—”

Tipping, spinning, in his chest a growing void. “If I want to what?”

“Continue the work.” Marcus froze, wringing his hands together tensely. “Continue on with the work without me.”

“Without you?” Tomas was on his feet and across the room in a blink, his heart hammering the void wide open. “What do you mean without you?”

Marcus sniffed, met Tomas square in the center of his gaze. “I mean that I’m unworthy.”

“You’re leaving me?”

“It’s for the best.”

Tomas’ knees turned to water. “No.”

"Tomas."

“But I just got back.”

“I know.”

“So you’re leaving now? Just like that?”

“No.” Marcus’ eyes flicked to the dark window. “I’ll call Peter in the morning. We’ll figure out where you should go. Wherever you want to—”

“Will you stay with him?” Tomas’ stomach lurched and he feared he would be sick right there on the floor. “Will you stay with Peter?”

Marcus shook his head. “I should be alone.”

In a daze, Tomas crossed to the little table and collapsed down into a chair. He scrubbed his hands across his face and looked to Marcus with pleading eyes. “What am I supposed to do without you?”

Marcus took the chair across from Tomas and gazed down at his own hands which he pressed flat atop the table. “You do what you’ve always done.”

“I can’t do this alone.”

“There are others who can—”

“I don’t want anyone else.” Marcus sighed deeply at that and Tomas reached for his hands, taking them in his own in the distance between them. “Look at me, Marcus. Marcus, please look at me.”

Marcus watched their fingers tangling together for a moment before raising his wet eyes. Tomas wanted to kiss him and he wanted to scream. He wanted to barricade the door of the cabin and board over the little window and carve out a space for the two of them there that they could never leave. He wanted to anoint Marcus’ head with oil and wrench away the weight of his sins. Fall to his knees right there and beg God to show him that it would be all right. It would be all right if only he could—

“I’m sorry,” Marcus choked out, and Tomas shook his head sadly.

“Don’t be sorry.” He squeezed Marcus hands, trying so desperately to convey the force of his longing through his skin. “Don’t be sorry, just stay.”

“Tomas.”

“Please,” Tomas croaked, then laughed and tasted tears upon his tongue. “We’ll put on sackcloth and ashes and do our penance together.”

With dampness in his eyes and on his cheeks, Marcus began to laugh, pulling his hands away and wiping at his face as his expression slipped between anguish and amusement and adoration. “Don’t you dare make me laugh right now.”

Tomas wiped at his own eyes. “I would never dream of doing such a thing.”

They stared at each other then, for a moment that stretched into eternity and shrank back down into the little square of the cabin that surrounded them. And then Tomas said, “Come to bed with me,” and Marcus lowered his eyes again in quiet shame.

But as quickly as the shame had come, it was replaced with something else. Marcus looked to Tomas again and gave him a little nod, then rose to his feet and rounded the table, reaching out his hands and pulling Tomas to his feet. “Sackcloth,” he said, drawing Tomas close, running hands along his arms and his shoulders and his neck and his face, “and ashes.”

Tomas could manage only a whispered, “Yes,” before his words were being swallowed up in a kiss, and then Marcus was all over him, drawing their bodies across the room until they collapsed in a heap on the narrow bed.

Marcus licked into Tomas’ mouth and tore at his clothes. “I want to feel your skin,” he breathed against Tomas’ lips. “I want to feel your skin on my skin.”

Dizzy and crumbling and so suddenly aroused he could hardly breathe, Tomas used his fumbling fingers to tear Peter’s flannel from his body, then set out to help Marcus strip his own torso bare. Tomas pulled Marcus close to his body, groping at the warmth of his flesh, pressing the blessed ticking of their hearts together and kissing deeply until their lips began to ache.

Sackcloth and ashes. Sackcloth and ashes. Marcus tasted of nothing but love. He rocked his hardness against Tomas’ hip and they held close to one another, slotting together there on the narrow strip of bed not nearly big enough for the two of them. The moon shining in through the little window like the loving eye of God, Marcus fumbled with Tomas pants, getting them down around his hips just enough to take Tomas into his hand.

Tomas gasped into Marcus’ mouth, tugging at his waistband. “Together, together,” he breathed, and Marcus nodded his understanding. And when Tomas, blessedly, took Marcus into his own hand, the world around them turned to light. Panting and stealing each other's lips, they tumbled toward the glory of their completion with a quickness, Marcus’ fingers trembling like wind-caught branches against Tomas’ skin. Tomas could remember nothing but this moment, no past and no future to come, no vows and no promises and no visions of their God. Marcus' flesh and his flesh alone, the only memories in existence.

Tomas reached his sobbing release suddenly and swallowed down every loving word from Marcus’ tongue, and Marcus spilled all over his hand and between the press of their bodies. “Tell me that you’ll stay,” Tomas breathed out, holding Marcus close as he could manage, the two of them trembling from head-to-foot. “Tell me that you’ll stay with me forever.”

“Forever,” was all that Marcus could manage, but oh, it was enough.

Forever. Forever. 

Forever. 

That would have to be enough.

—

Peter came for them in the morning, and by the afternoon they were on the road—just the two of them—in the old rust bucket Peter had been keeping in his garage. Peter had kissed Marcus goodbye on the forehead with a quiet sadness in his eyes; Tomas had hugged him with a gratitude he knew he could never convey with words.

“We should keep in touch with him,” Tomas said when they were just outside of Seattle.

“We will,” Marcus said quite seriously, and Tomas knew that it was a promise he intended to always keep. 

“Where are we going?” Tomas asked, and beside him Marcus smiled and gripped the wheel.

“I’ve got a place in mind,” Marcus said, shooting Tomas the warmest of glances before reaching for the radio dial.

Wrapped in static, a song Tomas didn’t recognize hummed gently from the radio, the uncertainty of their future stretching long as the road before them, their past pinned like the sun in their rearview. Seattle, Chicago, Rome, anywhere, the destination hardly mattered. Tomas leaned his head against the window and shut his eyes.

“Let me know when you want me to take over,” Tomas mumbled.

Through the hum of the music, Marcus’ gentle laugh rose. “Yeah, yeah. You just stay right where you are for now. Everything’s all right.”

Tomas sighed, contented, though he knew that darkness would come. _I’m here, and there you are._ he thought. _Here we are together. For now, everything’s going to be all right._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this thing that ended up being very different from my original vision because The Boys just want to feel all of the things all of the time. Thank you all so much for your lovely comments and encouragement, as always I would never finish a thing without you. <3


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